Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1383

Path of Radiance for sure right?

Cover of Ike definitely feels enough to give PoR the edge there

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4107-south-division-round-1-persona-3-vs-civilization-iv

This was one of the most debated round 1 matches. Civilization IV was the Guru favorite (and the overall bracket favorite), but Persona 3 had more Oracle picks by the time the match rolled around. Despite the close margin, Persona 3 led wire-to-wire and was never really threatened.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6065-best-game-ever-day-4-minecraft-vs-halo-combat-evolved

Minecraft was one of the popular "maybe this game will catch a rally and win the contest" picks. Of course, the caveat was that the target demographic was kids and teenagers, and they don't really come to this site anymore.

That being said, Minecraft did fairly well against Halo, all things considered, and it was actually the overall bracket favorite, with over 61% picking it. This was not a great contest for Halo, and the fact that not even the casuals were falling for it anymore was a bad sign.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6066-best-game-ever-day-4-final-fantasy-vii-vs-journey

Journey was a contender for weakest game in the bracket, but it was also facing a natural anti-vote magnet. The fact that FFVII was still able to get 84% here was a good sign for its chances down the line.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4108-south-division-round-1-final-fantasy-ix-vs-phoenix-wright-tt

In a battle of two really bad day votes, T&T won, albeit barely! Not much else to say about this one as it went pretty much as expected.

I'm surprised a game pulling in 1/4 of the votes can win any amount of time.

pjbasis posted...

I'm surprised a game pulling in 1/4 of the votes can win any amount of time.

Well, it's just in terms of percentage shifts. T&T brought FFIX's percentage down during the ASV, but only by like half a percent.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6067-best-game-ever-day-5-super-mario-bros-3-vs-age-of-empires-ii

Age of Empires II was another contender for weakest game in the bracket, and it certainly looked the part here, doing worse on Mario 3 than Journey had done on FFVII. Despite getting a 1 seed, this would be Mario 3's only win in this contest, for better or worse.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6068-best-game-ever-day-5-pokemon-red-blue-vs-tetris

This division was fascinating on paper. You had the three most popular Mario games and the most popular Pokémon game. Could R/B/Y/G run the gauntlet? I had predicted it to do so, and I think it probably would have done it based on what little we saw. Alas, rallies ruined a cool division.

At the time, this was viewed as an underperformance for Pokémon because Zelda 1 had put up 75% on Tetris in 2004 before losing to Mario 3, and R/B/Y/G's inability to SFF it was considered a problem. It's also a shame Tetris was wasted here because it could've been an interesting entrant elsewhere.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4109-southwest-division-round-1-resident-evil-4-vs-jet-grind

We expect voters to be smart enough to take a concept like "Game of the Decade" seriously (until the final match becomes Majora's Mask vs. Brawl but I digress), and most people expected Resident Evil 4 in particular to take advantage of that and get a potential "respect" boost. It certainly came out strong, but considering the opponent, you couldn't really tell if there was a boost in performance.

Leonhart4 posted...

At the time, this was viewed as an underperformance for Pokémon because Zelda 1 had put up 75% on Tetris in 2004 before losing to Mario 3, and R/B/Y/G's inability to SFF it was considered a problem. It's also a shame Tetris was wasted here because it could've been an interesting entrant elsewhere.

General concensus was that Mario 3 would win next round until the Undertale match the mext day. Almost everyone stuck with RBY only because they expected it to be favored by the rally.

Jet Set Radio just needed to make the bracket. Happy it did.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6069-best-game-ever-day-5-portal-2-vs-sonic-the-hedgehog-2

This was one of the more highly debated round 1 matches because it had the potential to be a three point result, since the winner was likely to win again next round. Portal 2 had 60% of the Guru brackets (and overall brackets, too), but Sonic 2 was the favorite once the match rolled around after seeing how old games were doing and how Portal 1 had flopped against Melee. The Oracle average was 51% for Sonic 2, so people were still expecting a close match.

Portal 2 took a very small early lead and held it for 30 minutes, but once Sonic 2 took the lead, it never looked back. Its percentage gradually increased for basically the rest of the match for a fairly comfortable win.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6070-best-game-ever-day-5-uncharted-2-vs-the-walking-dead

It was no real surprise that Uncharted 2 won, but the margin of victory was. The Oracle average was only about 58% here, and it posted a doubling. There was debate whether this was a sign of strength for Uncharted 2 and it stood a chance next round, or if this just meant Walking Dead was week. It was probably the latter.

But this was the last day of innocent fun for this contest. It lasted five days.

Leonhart4 posted...

It lasted five days.

Oof

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4110-southwest-division-round-1-gta-vice-city-vs-silent-hill-2

Vice City once got 46% on Melee and by 2010, it could only get 63% on Silent Hill 2, a respected but niche game. You can sort of track GTA's downfall by following Vice City and Vercetti.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6071-best-game-ever-day-6-fallout-3-vs-life-is-strange

The Oracle average for Fallout 3 was 77.76% here, and it had over 80% before the Tumblr rally spillover brought it down to its final percentage.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6072-best-game-ever-day-6-undertale-vs-mass-effect-3

Mass Effect 3's Oracle average was 70% and if it had managed that instead of the 65% it had when the rally started, maybe this could have been avoided. ME3's peak lead was over 9200 votes, and Undertale erased it in about 7 and a half hours. This was largely possible due to our floundering vote totals. The margin would've been too big if we had our old totals. The fact that one rally can completely overwhelm our contests not once but twice was not a sign of good health.

And both Draven and Undertale got the perfect first match to manage a big comeback and get the ball rolling. L-Block caught a break early on in 2007, so sometimes it's just luck that lets these things survive past the early rounds before they catch fire.

But make no mistake: the contest was over. I called it over the second Undertale took the lead, and nothing I saw ever made me doubt the ultimate outcome. Gotta love how rallies make our contests more unpredictable and fun.

Still hurts to see 10 years later.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6071-best-game-ever-day-6-fallout-3-vs-life-is-strange

The Oracle average for Fallout 3 was 77.76% here, and it had over 80% before the Tumblr rally spillover brought it down to its final percentage.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6072-best-game-ever-day-6-undertale-vs-mass-effect-3

Mass Effect 3's Oracle average was 70% and if it had managed that instead of the 65% it had when the rally started, maybe this could have been avoided. ME3's peak lead was over 9200 votes, and Undertale erased it in about 7 and a half hours. This was largely possible due to our floundering vote totals. The margin would've been too big if we had our old totals. The fact that one rally can completely overwhelm our contests not once but twice was not a sign of good health.

And both Draven and Undertale got the perfect first match to manage a big comeback and get the ball rolling. L-Block caught a break early on in 2007, so sometimes it's just luck that lets these things survive past the early rounds before they catch fire.

But make no mistake: the contest was over. I called it over the second Undertale took the lead, and nothing I saw ever made me doubt the ultimate outcome. Gotta love how rallies make our contests more unpredictable and fun.

If the round 1 match was Pokémon or the path got hard earlier, yeah this probably never happens. But thankfully it wasn’t!

Like, imagine Melee was in round 2 instead of the semis.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4111-southwest-division-round-1-world-ends-with-you-vs-dead

This was one of the most debated fourpacks in the contest because both games here (as well as Persona 4 in the next match) were all considered realistic options to advance to round three. Dead Rising was a slight favorite in this match, with a 50.74% Oracle average and a 55-50 advantage in pickers.

However, when the match started, it was TWEWY that took the early lead. It got up to 92 votes after the second update, but then the two went back and forth for hours after that. There were only two updates in the first eight hours where Dead Rising's lead hit triple digits. It used the morning vote to pull away from there and won by 654 votes.

I wish TWEWY was stronger than it is. Both characters and the game.

I feel like TWEWY probably wins that match now because Dead Rising has essentially been forgotten. Of course, Persona 4 probably wins this fourpack with relative ease, too.

TeamRocketElite posted...

I wish TWEWY was stronger than it is. Both characters and the game.

That’s a game I’ll never understand the appeal of. I hated it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6073-best-game-ever-day-6-gta-vice-city-vs-final-fantasy-viii

FFVIII was the only winning game to benefit from the rally spillover, albeit not by much. It went from 58% to 60% but you wouldn't expect either of these games to be big on Tumblr, so it makes sense that they mostly balanced out.

Looking back on it, this was a bad performance for VIII. The Oracle average was 65% and GTA in general didn't do great in this contest. At some point between 2009 and 2015, FFVIII dropped off and FFIX shot up. You could already kind of see it in 2013 when Squall lost to Vivi (and 2018 showed that wasn't a fluke).

You can almost see a correlation between VIII's strength and our vote totals. When they were high, it did well. When they were low, it struggled. All the more reason why these low vote totals are terrible!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6074-best-game-ever-day-6-super-mario-world-vs-animal-crossing

This was an 85/15 SFF beatdown before the rally kicked in. Mario World looked like a beast in the moments before rallies kicked in for its matches. It would've been interesting to see how it would've done against Mario 64 (because we know it beats 3) or Pokémon, but alas.

Pokémon was likely already ruining the whole Mario gauntlet, but I think World would've come out on top if they had met.

Leonhart4 posted...

This was an 85/15 SFF beatdown before the rally kicked in. Mario World looked like a beast in the moments before rallies kicked in for its matches. It would've been interesting to see how it would've done against Mario 64 (because we know it beats 3) or Pokémon, but alas.

Possibly the most ridiculous rally result in the entire contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4112-southwest-division-round-1-persona-4-vs-braid

It's kind of weird to look back on this match now and see Persona 4 only got 64% on Braid. I wonder how high it goes now since it got 77% on 999 in 2015 and Golden got 77% on FTL in 2020.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6075-best-game-ever-day-7-skyrim-vs-phoenix-wright

There was a lot of curiosity about how Skyrim would do after its dominant GotY performance a few years earlier. Unfortunately, it got a tough situation right off the bat to make it look as bad as possible. First off, it got the Board 8 mascot series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, as its 16 seed. Secondly, it had to deal with some residual rally spillover from the day before, and it seemed to favor PW. It only had 53% at the freeze, and even after a massive rise to get a doubling, this felt like a disappointment. It was hard to envision it having a chance against Mario 64 down the line.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6076-best-game-ever-day-7-goldeneye-007-vs-diablo-ii

There was also some interest surrounding GoldenEye and finally seeing what it could really do in a one-on-one setting. GoldenEye > Skyrim was Ngamer's upset special pick for this contest, and while Skyrim looked vulnerable, GoldenEye didn't appear to be the one poised to take advantage of it. It was hard to imagine Skyrim being that close to Diablo II.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4113-southwest-division-round-1-portal-vs-gears-of-war-2

This was another debated fourpack between Portal and FFXII. Many went with the old school choice of "Final Fantasy always wins," even with a divisive entry, but Portal had plenty of support, too. It announced its presence with a dominant performance against Gears 2, which was one of the vote-in polls winners, and established itself as the favorite next round. It actually had 78% at the freeze and 75% at the end of the Power Hour before Gears 2 brought the percentage down to a slightly less insane number.

I think NGamer abandoned his Goldeneye upset before brackets closed. Pretty sure I remember Alec ranting about this betrayal on The Show.

Looking at the Guru picks, you are indeed correct

For shame

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6077-best-game-ever-day-7-metroid-prime-vs-morrowind

Metroid Prime had 71% at the freeze and 68% at the end of the Power Hour. Metroid's early vote was as good as anyone's, but that meant a drastic drop from there.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6078-best-game-ever-day-7-half-life-2-vs-demons-souls

Allen set up a rematch between Metroid Prime and Half-Life 2 from GotD. HL2 had won the first time, but few expected that result to repeat itself now. It put up a similar result on Demon's Souls that Prime put up on Morrowind, so it was just a matter of which of those two games you thought was stronger.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4114-southwest-division-round-1-final-fantasy-xii-vs-crisis-core

If you had FFXII beating Portal next round, it was hard to feel good about it after this result.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6079-best-game-ever-day-8-super-mario-64-vs-mario-kart-8

Aside from GotD2, Mario Kart almost always gets bad draws in contests. Somehow MK8 was the only game from the series to make the bracket, and it got stuck in an SFF beatdown against Mario 64.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6080-best-game-ever-day-8-final-fantasy-tactics-vs-resident-evil

This was a battle of two midcard '90s games. FFT had 83% of Guru picks, and the Oracle average was 54% here, so it actually overperformed a little. This was a rough contest for Resident Evil in general, but we'll get into that when the time comes.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4115-southwest-division-round-1-skies-of-arcadia-vs-baldurs-gate

This match contained one of the wildest vote swings in a match not featuring Final Fantasy VII or a joke/rallied entrant. Skies of Arcadia had 63.66% at the freeze, and it had 57.83% and led by nearly 1000 votes at the end of the Power Hour. It only added another 700 votes to its lead from there as Baldur's Gate II took off over 5% by the end. It seems unlikely it would've won a full 24-hour match since it never actually made any serious cuts, but it was crazy to see.

At the time, it was hard to know which game was more responsible for the extreme variation, but I believe we saw the same trends from Baldur's Gate II again in 2015 (I'll check when we get to its match) and even from Baldur's Gate III in the GotY polls.

Any chance the success of Baldur's Gate 3 got people to play the older games to give them a boost?

Most examples we have of series exploding in popularity with a later entry don't seem to retroactively boost previous entries. Maybe the only example we have is Mass Effect, which was terrible in Games 2009 but was pretty strong in 2010 and 2015. It's also a series that encourages you to play all the games because of the compound effect of your choices carrying over to the next game, so it might be unique in that regard.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6081-best-game-ever-day-8-zelda-twilight-princess-vs-skies-of

Hey, it's Skies of Arcadia facing a Zelda game in a Games Contest again! And it pretty much went the same way it did against Wind Waker.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6082-best-game-ever-day-8-shin-megami-tensei-persona-4-vs-999

I'm not sure we thought Persona 4 was capable of scoring such a big blowout, even against an obscure game like 999. The Oracle average was only 70% for it, so this was a bit of an eye opener.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Any chance the success of Baldur's Gate 3 got people to play the older games to give them a boost?

Maybe if there was an essily accessible modernized collection, but BG1 and BG2 are absolutely archaic.

LeonhartFour posted...

Most examples we have of series exploding in popularity with a later entry don't seem to retroactively boost previous entries. Maybe the only example we have is Mass Effect, which was terrible in Games 2009 but was pretty strong in 2010 and 2015. It's also a series that encourages you to play all the games because of the compound effect of your choices carrying over to the next game, so it might be unique in that regard.

Persona may have too, to a degree at least

(and maybe Xenoblade?)

Persona 4 seemed to go up on his own. We saw in the 2015 contest that P3 didn't really get affected by P4's burgeoning popularity.

Well I was thinking 5 boosted 4 to pass the Rockstar duo and as the breakout game there, won’t have any data for 3 in regards to that though

Well, P4 already seemed stronger in 2015 (which was pre-P5 release) than it did in 2010. I dunno how much stronger it got from there.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Persona may have too, to a degree at least

(and maybe Xenoblade?)

Xenoblade probably benefited less from the sequels and more getting a re-release that isn’t either GameStop exclusive or on a system no one owned.

slykirby posted...

Xenoblade probably benefited less from the sequels and more getting a re-release that isn’t either GameStop exclusive or on a system no one owned.

That came out after the contest in which it showed great strength.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4116-southwest-division-round-1-mass-effect-vs-plants-vs-zombies

Speaking of Mass Effect, the one difference between 2009 Games and GotD was the release of Mass Effect 2, which was wildly successful. This wasn't a dominant performance by any means, but it was good enough to tell you that ME1 was on a different level from before.

Leonhart4 posted...

Allen set up a rematch between Metroid Prime and Half-Life 2 from GotD. HL2 had won the first time,

It had not. While a very close match, Prime won the first one as well.

Oh whoops, you're right. I mixed that up with the Fallout 3 match.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6083-best-game-ever-day-9-zelda-ocarina-of-time-vs-hearthstone

It was only fitting for Ocarina of Time to get the blowout of the contest and our first 90%+ result in a long time. It's hard for OoT to outperform the Oracle average by over 10% but Hearthstone was something special.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6084-best-game-ever-day-9-suikoden-ii-vs-monster-hunter-4u

This was practically a tossup in the Guru, with Monster Hunter having only a 7 pick advantage. Suikoden was a slight favorite in overall picks. By the time the match happened, Suikoden II had a two to one advantage in Oracle picks. It won fairly uneventfully, and Suikoden II might have been the weakest game to make round 2 in this contest.

And just think, that was the weakest Ocarina we've ever seen judging by the rest of the contest.

Any match a Blizzard game loses is a great match

snake_5036 posted...

Any match a Blizzard game loses is a great match

Especially when it’s the worst game ever designed under any medium.

There will never be a video game worse than Hearthstone. It’s completely impossible.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4117-west-division-round-1-metal-gear-solid-3-vs-timesplitters-2

Not much to say about this match in particular, but we were looking forward to the Metal Gear gauntlet in this division, seeing how the hierarchy would fall. Surely nothing would get in the way of that...!