Contest and Stats Discussion - Part 1385

I've heard some mixed things about Superstars, but how is it that bad?

I liked how you could play as Lego Knuckles in the game. So cute.

I didn't play it because of the mixed reviews, so maybe I shouldn't have said it was outright bad, but nobody talks about it anymore, which I consider a positive for the series as a whole that the mediocre games just get forgotten now.

Sonic was at his peak in the contests in '05/'06, so I would guess that the series itself would probably be near its peak as well. I would imagine the two were still pretty closely linked at the time.

Was he not stronger in 02? Perhaps not.

Well, the question is did he get weaker after 2002 or did Samus just get a lot stronger? We know Seph did, obviously. Could be a combination of both, I suppose.

Does the similar question apply a few years later? Did Sonic get stronger or did Crono and Mega Man weaken more?

It's hard to tell. They were relative equals in 2005 and 2006. Crono seemed stronger in 2004, but this was pre-Nintendo Boost, so he went from easily beating Mario to easily losing to Mario. How much of that was Mario and how much of that was Crono?

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is getting an update:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeq1950EhsM

I like how they reveal MOMO and just completely refuse to explain who she is.

Leonhart4 posted...

Alucard began his move, but we thought, even if he did take the lead, he wouldn't be able to weather the morning vote. Yet when the morning vote came, Alucard didn't stop. He managed to take the lead with only three hours left. It wasn't until the last 15 minutes that he was able to get over 100 votes, but he held on for a wild win that defied our usual trends.

In retrospect, this feels to me like a changing-of-the-guard moment that signified our trends' gradual metamorphosis from their former form to become mostly geographical, rallies aside. This was a match I myself kind of forgot about - remembered it was close, but not that close - and hopefully I won't forget that again thanks to you.

I think it's really neat when you can track individual nexus points like that, as you mentioned with the GTA/Warcraft match, and it for me is something that contributes meaningfully to these contests' mystique.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5173-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-glados-vs-cole-vs

After Wheatley's dud, GlaDOS came out and dominated against admittedly less than stellar competition. I wonder how many people voted for Ragna the Bloodedge because his name is Ragna the Bloodedge. Also poor Cole couldn't even get his last name on the poll.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2447-ultima-division-semifinal-final-fantasy-vs-mega-man



Another match where the picture is a bigger story than the result. Even though Final Fantasy was the top option, Mega Man was on the left, presumably because Mega Man moves from left to right, even though CJayC didn't do the same thing for Mega Man X. Well, I guess FF parties tend to start on the right, too. Whatever, I dunno if that confused any voters into picking the wrong option, but it was an odd choice.

Also the picture theme for this round was inconsistent. Sometimes it was good guy fighting bad guy and sometimes it was three heroes against three heroes.

Leonhart4 posted...

I wonder how many people voted for Ragna the Bloodedge because his name is Ragna the Bloodedge. Also poor Cole couldn't even get his last name on the poll.

some people would have voted for Cole Macgrath for sure

Leonhart4 posted...

Whatever, I dunno if that confused any voters into picking the wrong option, but it was an odd choice.

Considering how badly MM got beaten, I would hope that it didn't have extra voters getting confused into voting for it. This poll is probably proof that Top Option vs. Bottom Option doesn't really matter (at least for entrants people actually care about).

Oh, I was in the wrong topic when I posted the Xenoblade 2 trailer. Oops.

KamikazePotato posted...

Considering how badly MM got beaten, I would hope that it didn't have extra voters getting confused into voting for it. This poll is probably proof that Top Option vs. Bottom Option doesn't really matter (at least for entrants people actually care about).

I think it only really matters for voters who have no strong opinion but still want to vote anyway. There's always going to be a few of those. It can still affect two highly known entities if the voter likes both roughly equally.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5174-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-ike-vs-proto-man-vs

Ike was the big favorite here with over 90% of Guru picks. We had only seen Protoman twice before, getting SFF'd by Zero in 2004 and losing to Snake in 2010, so he'd never been in a remotely winnable situation before now.

This wasn't a back and forth fight like Alucard/Falcon had been. Ike never lost the lead. He managed to keep Protoman at arm's length almost the entire way. Also I'm pretty sure Robotnik got the highest percentage for a third place finisher in this contest, so this is one of those weird situations where the winner looked kinda disappointing but the two losers were kinda impressive.

I feel like I could have been an Eggman picker there, or just went with Ike cause of board consensus

To go back to an earlier match, I was looking at the Geolocation results for Alucard/Captain Falcon, and this has to be one of the only matches where the runner-up won the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and still lost the match. Possibly the only time France decided a contest result.

Crazy that some random enemy in a Mega Man game almost won that match. Ike being in Smash is probably the only thing that tipped him over the edge.

hey man, goomba, piranha plant, and Boo would all slay

Oh, Ike without Smash would be fodder.

Also Protoman isn't a random enemy in Mega Man.

Gonna be honest i've never played it. I thought he was one of the random bosses you fight in the games to get the powers.

Proto Man is to Mega Man what Zero is to Mega Man X.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5175-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-epona-vs-mordin-vs

One of our running jokes used to be asking who was the strongest character that would lose to a random piece of furniture from Final Fantasy VII. Of course, we couldn't get that into a contest, so we settled for the next best thing: Link's horse. It turns out Epona could beat a lot of characters. Tough break for Mordin. He deserved better than this. Niko was here, too, I guess.

Shaped like a horse to run you over.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2448-ultima-division-semifinal-street-fighter-vs-resident-evil



Another running joke we had was when someone would make a topic asking, "Who is [insert character here]?" There was always at least one person who would respond with, "The main character of Resident Evil Gaiden."

Well, that joke became a reality for one day, and it almost cost Resident Evil the match. RE was the clear favorite off of the success of RE4 and the relative dormancy of SF (this was pre-SF4, and while Evo Moment #37 had happened in 2004, this was still the early days of stuff going viral, so it wasn't widespread on the internet yet, so SF3 hadn't had its renaissance yet). The Oracle average was 57% for RE here.

Resident Evil got off to a strong start, but Street Fighter used the deep night vote to make a charge. It got within a couple hundred votes of the lead, but the day vote helped RE build up a 2500 vote lead before the second night vote allowed Street Fighter to cut off some votes to make the final margin a bit closer.

It's easy to blame this result on the picture, but it didn't matter much in the end because RE had held on to win (Street Fighter > Resident Evil was my upset special for this contest, so close), and no match picture was going to give it a chance of not getting wrecked by Final Fantasy next round anyway.

I think picture advantages usually matter less for Games/Series, but boy howdy is that a massive pic disadvantage.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5176-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-shulk-vs-ratchet-vs

Shulk wasn't really feeling it in this match. I think Altair was the lowest seeded character to win a match in this contest as a 25th seed. Altair is one of those weird characters who barely sneaks into the field but can do some damage when he's in because of that iconic assassin look. We almost had a perfect 44/33/22 split here, which is kinda cool.

Wonder how this match goes now post-Smash.

Probably the complete opposite result

I think Ratchet would actually be pretty decent if we used the same 4-matches-a-day format as before. Every mascot type character severely overperformed that year because everyone participating was forced to vote in all matches.

Shulk would also be a lot better though. His most recent result is this:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7284-division-6-round-1-shulk-vs-sub-zero

Which is before the Xenoblade remake released. Cameo appearances in other Xeno games doesn't hurt either.

Based on what happened to Ezio in 2018, Altair wouldn't do so hot anymore. Assassin's Creed is a struggling series these days.

Eh, I think Altair has more staying power than Ezio because Ezio was in 2013, too, and he kinda sucked (as we shall soon see). Altair functions as an avatar or mascot for Assassin's Creed as a whole, and he doesn't have the ridiculously long name, to boot.

Plus the Black Flag remaster has done really well so maybe AC would get a little bump from that.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2447-ultima-division-semifinal-final-fantasy-vs-mega-man



Another match where the picture is a bigger story than the result. Even though Final Fantasy was the top option, Mega Man was on the left, presumably because Mega Man moves from left to right, even though CJayC didn't do the same thing for Mega Man X. Well, I guess FF parties tend to start on the right, too. Whatever, I dunno if that confused any voters into picking the wrong option, but it was an odd choice.

IIRC, that is exactly why CJayC did the order swap. Mega Man moves left to right (for the most part), FF teams are generally on the right of the screen.

And I don't think enough people really pay attention to order or seeding if the options are recognizable.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5177-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-lara-vs-yuri-h-vs

This was Lara Croft's first time back in a while, and she got an easy draw for round one. Slime did pretty well though, all things considered. I remember Yuri was hovering just under 10% for most of the match, and he finally hit exactly 10% on the last update. This is what we Shadow Hearts fans have to root for.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2449-hyrule-division-final-the-legend-of-zelda-vs-metroid

This is what SFF used to be like back in the day. The Oracle average for Zelda was 77% here, and it takes quite a beatdown to surpass that with ease.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5178-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-kefka-vs-zack-vs-ryu

Kefka doesn't have normal matches, and Hayabusa has also been a wildly inconsistent character in contests. As such, Zack was the favorite based off of his success in 2008 and 2010. The only real debate was whether Kefka would LFF Zack enough to let Hayabusa sneak through. Whoever won here would also be the favorite to win again next round, so this was an important match.

When Kefka led at the freeze, we chalked it up to the board vote. However, on the next update, his percentage held and his lead went up. After about an hour, we realized that Kefka was going to win and win easily. And somehow Hayabusa finished third despite the LFF. ZackFAQs had a good run, but this was where it ended.

Yeah, most of us were punished for getting Zack > Hayabusa here. Having it the other way around gave you points for getting second place correctly. Basically no one had Kefka winning.

I'm fairly certain this was the match that took us down to one perfect bracket remaining and if IIRC correctly that person somehow dropped it on Lugia.

Nothing about Kefka will ever make sense. You can build divisions meant to give him a winnable path, and he'll f*** it all up in like round 2.

Give him tough matches right off the bat, and he'll figure a way to the division finals for the hell of it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5179-character-battle-ix-division-5-round-1-cloud-vs-armstrong-vs

This was regarded as an underperformance for Cloud because look at this competition. A doubling would be impressive for anyone else, but he's held to a higher standard.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2450-snake-division-final-metal-gear-vs-kingdom-hearts

No surprises here. The Oracle average was about 57% for Metal Gear. It had 63% at the freeze and stayed over 60% for the first 13 hours of the match before the Kingdom Hearts day vote let it shave a couple percentage points off to make it look a bit more respectable.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5180-character-battle-ix-division-5-round-1-jack-vs-frog-vs-joe

We all knew Frog was going to win, so the real question was over who would finish 2nd. It turned out to be a valid question since it was a tight finish, but Viewtiful Joe pulled it off against Handsome Jack.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2451-mushroom-division-final-super-mario-bros-vs-super-smash-bros

This was the first sign of weakness we saw from any of the big three in this contest, and it tells you just how massive Smash hype was at the time. After seeing what Zelda did to Metroid, we were expecting Mario to lay some SFF smackdown of its own, although not to the same extent. The Oracle average was just over 69% for it.

Mario only had 61% at the freeze, but it slowly rose from there and peaked at 64.42% almost ten hours in. If Mario had ended the match around this percentage, I think we would've been okay with it and felt like we just overestimated the SFF. However, this was where the vaunted Smash day vote appeared, slicing nearly 3% off of Mario's percentage from there until the end of the match. Very few people thought Mario had a real shot at actually beating Final Fantasy next round, but this result seemed to seal its fate.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5181-character-battle-ix-division-5-round-1-sly-vs-francis-vs

Lugia got to be the beneficiary of SuperNiceDog changing his Guru pick partway through the nomination process, and it got a very favorable draw as a result. Even if you didn't think Lugia would be strong, there was no way it was losing to Sly Cooper or York. This was around the height of Deadly Premonition's 15 minutes of internet fame, so it was nice that York benefited from it and made the field.

Lugia is such a weird entrant to me. Like, why? The fact that he got placed favorably enough to win a match just makes it funnier.

I think perhaps it was just about seeing how strong the strongest gen 2 Pokémon was, which was heavily expected to be Lugia.

Still baffled this is where we lost the last perfect bracket. I don't recall who it was though.

KamikazePotato posted...

Lugia is such a weird entrant to me. Like, why? The fact that he got placed favorably enough to win a match just makes it funnier.

Even better if you know Lugia was meant to be anime-only. Something something poor Strider Hiryu.

Well it only ever wasn't in that first demo before making it into the next demo and being a cover Pokémon for the actual games coming out. It's far from the only Pokémon to debut in animation, even though it was designed for it. Basically every fan was introduced to it along with the rest of the generation and it was among the most popular right away.

I don't think it's weird entrant compared to any other Pokémon really.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Still baffled this is where we lost the last perfect bracket. I don't recall who it was though.

isNotPerfect was the last perfect bracket to fall.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5182-character-battle-ix-division-5-round-1-dante-vs-laharl-vs

This was the first contest post-DmC, so of course people were terrified that Dante would get sabotaged with Donte pics. He got a Shin Megami Tensei pic for this match (Dante is one of those guys who's been in more stuff than you think). Not that it would've mattered against Laharl and Raz, but he had a big match against Squirtle next round, so it was important to show what he could do.

And had Dante somehow not lost that he was going to be set up against Leon yet again.

Play Ratchet & Clank