Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1382

We're very close to 2018 being as far away from now as it was to the previous 1v1 character battle before it.

What is left when votals shrink is hard to judge. Maybe that favors FF. Aside from that, Kirby has been way more relevant than Tidus obviously.

I mean we can only judge based on what we last saw

I still doubt Kirby pushes a doubling now

nah I forgot Tidus was even in 2018 tbh

I'm traumatized by the squall/zelda match, and I just have to remember Zelda would destroy Kirby. Which also sucks!

For what it's worth I doubt Zelda is as strong now as she was then

Still high tier but part of me wonders if she could beat all those Noble Niners again

If TotK Ganondorf was in BotW would he have been a NN destroyer too?

Let's not even think about that

Leonhart4 posted...

For what it's worth I doubt Zelda is as strong now as she was then

Still high tier but part of me wonders if she could beat all those Noble Niners again

She got her first canon game as protagonist last year and she's getting her second game as protagonist this winter!

how many zoomed in camera shots of her butt do those games have

pjbasis posted...

If TotK Ganondorf was in BotW would he have been a NN destroyer too?

Maybe if it was Wind Waker Ganondorf instead. TotK Ganondorf doesn't have anything going on. Far less than Calamity Ganon, certainly.

Leonhart4 posted...

For what it's worth I doubt Zelda is as strong now as she was then

Still high tier but part of me wonders if she could beat all those Noble Niners again

It’s sad we can’t verify. If anything I think she’s stronger now.

Maybe we're better off with no contests if all of the Zelda big three are going to be knocking off Noble Niners

Zelinkdorf

I definitely think Zelda would be a bit weaker. There was more hype surrounding her character back in 2018.

Zelda is sliggtly weaker but still Noble Nine strength would be my guess

I guess the question would be which of the Noble Nine could beat her now. Would she still be ahead of Sonic/Snake/Sephiroth? Are Dread and MP4 enough to put Samus ahead? Is Mario better than he was in 2018? Mega Man and Crono seem almost guaranteed to be at the bottom...

Crono might stay afloat due to declining vote totals.

We thought that in 2018 and he still didn't do well.

He did fine enough to beat Mega Man, at least!

Leonhart4 posted...

For what it's worth I doubt Zelda is as strong now as she was then

Still high tier but part of me wonders if she could beat all those Noble Niners again

I agree, because you have to remember 2018 was right when Smash Ultimate was dropping, so I think every Nintendo character from Link down to all the lower midcarders like K. Rool were on Smash hype steroids. Breath of the Wild no doubt increased Zelda's position on the totem pole significantly, but I would peg her as lower Noble Nine as opposed to mid-NN strength, which is still no small feat.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Crono might stay afloat due to declining vote totals.

I think he probably stays constant, since the kind of people who stay on this site now are exactly the people who have big nostalgia for Chrono Trigger. Maybe the close win with Mega Man is a close loss now, but it's not like Mega Man (or anyone else in the mid-to-low tier Noble Nine that isn't 1st party Nintendo or FFVII really) has any reason to be more relevant now than he was in 2018 either.

I think the greater question is whether or not Chrono Trigger could still hang like it seemed like it could in 2015. It looked like championship material that year, but at the same time, it never really ran into anything that could give it a fair fight either.

Sonic got three reasonably well-liked movies. And Shadow Generations, which is one of the more well-liked Sonic games, though it's technically not a Sonic game...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2105-dream-division-round-2-bowser-vs-ryu

In 2002, Ryu lost to Samus. In 2003, Ryu lost to Snake. In 2004, Ryu lost to Sonic. In 2006, Ryu lost to Mega Man. Somehow this match against Bowser was his worst loss of them all. It seems like Bowser was still riding high off of his Villains Contest run. He had 64% of brackets here, too. After this performance, people seriously began to wonder if Bowser could beat Snake.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

but it's not like Mega Man (or anyone else in the mid-to-low tier Noble Nine that isn't 1st party Nintendo or FFVII really) has any reason to be more relevant now than he was in 2018 either.

Every year that goes by is another year Crono is the only one not in Smash

I would pick Crono > Mega Man again.

Sure, but that doesn't mean either of them would beat Zelda.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2106-flood-division-round-2-master-chief-vs-donkey-kong

If there's a match that encapsulates both characters at the same time, it's this one. Donkey Kong built a 2000 vote lead overnight, but Master Chief used his formidable day vote to erase the lead and win by 1500. This is one of the largest vote swings we've ever seen in a one-on-one match. Donkey Kong had choked yet again, and Chief had actually completed the comeback this time after he had failed to hold on against Frog.

Also this is a match that could be a doubling now...!

It's still a funny twist that this was just after the Gauntlet.

MC is gonna get in Smash and avoid that doubling, bet!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2107-flood-division-round-2-tommy-vercetti-vs-crono

After the Gauntlet and a surprise close match, it was nice to have a breather here. Not much to say about this one. We expected Crono to stomp Vercetti, and he did.

Not much to say about that one. Crono just got the job done.

The last time Vercetti would look halfway decent.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2108-devil-division-round-2-dante-vs-vincent-valentine

As I said in his first round match, the reaction to Vincent's performance was insane. I feel like the buildup to this match was emblematic of the era when the board was generally younger, more immature, and more passionate/less chill about contests. There were constant heated debates about how well Vincent would or wouldn't do here.

Dante actually had a small lead at the freeze here. Vincent did the traditional FFVII rise to heaven on route to a more comfortable win, but the idea that he was a proxy stand-in for Cloud/Sephiroth came to a screeching halt. In fact, even victory next round was now up in the air.

Worth noting that Vincent only had a 25% prediction percentage here, so this was an instance of the board owning the casuals.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2107-flood-division-round-2-tommy-vercetti-vs-crono

After the Gauntlet and a surprise close match, it was nice to have a breather here. Not much to say about this one. We expected Crono to stomp Vercetti, and he did.

The hard thing about this match was... when Kefka outdid his expected percentage on Vercetii based on x-stats of previous contests, was it due to Kefka growing or Vercetti falling? (I specifically remember thinking about this when making my Oracle prediction) Crono vs. Vercetti showed us it was the latter.

Back then I was much younger and thought Vincent was much cooler than Squall. As a grown man pushing middle age, man I wish Squall had won.

Basically every character whose popularity can be summed up with "Damn he's cool" has weakened over the years. An aging fanbase at work.

If only more people knew what I recognized at the age of 13

Auron was pretty strong the last contest, wasn't he? And Zero.

That's because they really are that cool!

Wasn't Squall losing to Vincent the only reason he never made the noble 9 into the elite 10 or whatever the hell it would be called?

I mean, even Vincent was still decent in 2018, just not as strong as he used to be. It was the the same for Auron (who lost 55/45 to Sonic and 60/40 to Snake) and Zero (although based on Pikachu, he's apparently still worth 44% on Mega Man!).

There were people who made arguments for the Noble Nine to be expanded to ten for multiple characters at various points, but nothing ever gained any traction.

Noble Nine is just a really catchy alliteration, and I think most of the NN-breaker contenders weren't in the 2002 contest, except like Squall.

KamikazePotato posted...

Noble Nine is just a really catchy alliteration, and I think most of the NN-breaker contenders weren't in the 2002 contest, except like Squall.

Yeah, which was the main argument for Squall being added to the list because he had never missed, unlike the others like Ganondorf, Bowser, or Vincent, but yeah, the argument against him was ironically the loss to Vincent.

Squall was a step below even before that. The top 8 of the first three contests were all NNers with the sole exception being Scorpion who everyone knew perfect bracket placement while Sonic and Mega Man had very close losses. In 03 only Crono missed the top 8 and in 04 only Mario. In xstats they were the top 9 in 02. In 03 Magus was only barely above Sonic, otherwise they were top 9 again and in 04, Snake missed it by a little bit but the rest were top 8. Squall wasn't close to these things. His main case was not missing a contest indeed but losing to Vincent didn't change anything regarding the NN, it only removed Squall from being the strongest outsider.

Oh, I agree. Squall didn't belong in the group and I never argued that he did. The Noble Nine really did stand apart from everyone else.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2109-devil-division-round-2-knuckles-the-echidna-vs-squall

Speaking of Squall, he was the clear favorite coming into this match, but a bandwagon began forming around Knuckles from the moment he beat Magus. This wasn't too surprising because this was back when Squall was a more divisive character on the board, and B8 loves an underdog run. Knuckles kept it close during the board vote, but it didn't take long for Squall to take the lead as he gradually built up to around 57% overnight. The Sonic day vote allowed Knuckles to make the final score a little more respectable, but he was never in it beyond the opening minutes.

Now Squall had put up a similar performance on Knuckles that Vincent had put on Dante, so the question now was who would win between Dante and Knuckles. Dante had been ahead of Knuckles in the X-Stats in 2003 and 2004 and now he had DMC3, to boot, so Vincent seemed like the favorite going in now. Looking back, it's pretty likely that Knuckles did bandwagon and overperform here because he ended up noticeably higher in the final X-Stats than he usually did. Despite Magus being exposed as an overrated fraud, he still managed to be more overrated than we thought...!

Knuckles developed a reputation as the Square Killer over the years, and for good reason. Every year except for 2002, he finished ahead of at least one Square character. He finished 10-1 against Square, with his lone loss coming here against Squall.

2003 - Yuna
2004 - Kefka
2005 - Magus
2007 - Rikku and Vaan
2008 - Fei Fong Wong
2010 - Cecil
2013 - Celes and Seifer
2018 - Zidane

At least Knuckles didn't end up against Snake again.

Somehow, despite his very good contest history, Knuckles has never made round 3.

….Knuckles vs Tidus round 2, let’s do it.

Never got to see sprite Knuckles, which was a shame

if i had ever won guru my plan was to make my pic knuckles so he'd get a high enough seed to make a deep run

a waste? maybe. probably. i just love knuckles

I mean there have been worse Guru picks

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2110-chaos-division-round-2-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-diablo

The Oracle average and the Villains Contest both predicted a 65/35 result (which is also what Ganondorf got on Diablo), and Sonic outperformed that by over 3% here. After a rough couple of contests in 2003 and 2004, Sonic seemed to have rebounded a bit. Not many were willing to give him a shot to beat Mega Man in a couple of rounds yet, but at least no one was worried that he would lose to Tifa at this point!