LogFAQs > #921170939

Now that I can look at the whole bracket easily, here's part 1 of my suggestions:

Characters to Consider Adding

- Cecil Harvey (as far as I understand it, his distinctive characterization and moral struggle represented a new milestone in character development among video game protagonists)
- Clyde (the first video game villain who was something more than an enemy, and had some sort of actual characterization in his uniquely random manner)
- Creeper (came onto the scene with a uniquely suicidal and devastating style of attack that leveraged Minecraft's voxel sandbox properties to their fullest, and has since become arguably the icon of its tremendously popular and influential game, and arguably even indie gaming in general)
- Doomguy / Doom Slayer (a character whose characterization [implied in the original series, and directly shown in the reboot] perfectly encapsulates the gameplay and general ethos of his tremendously influential debut game, arguably serving as the popularizer of the whole archetype of heroes of few words, but big weapons in shooters and even certain similar games)
- Lee Everett (a rare prominent, positive depiction of a minority ethnicity in video gaming, and a pioneer of the modern resurgence of choice-heavy adventure gaming)
- Ms. Pac-Man (the first female character with a substantial, playable role in a popular game, and one who was and even is still to a certain extent distinct for her lack of sexualization, particularly in gameplay)
- Pauline (the original damsel-in-distress of video games, with the success of her game establishing said archetype as the most common goal of a hero's quest in video gaming; that alone should be enough for a low seed at least, even if you consider the likes of Peach and Zelda to be much more influential as popularizers of their archetype)
- Red Bird (not very influential as a character, but his source game turned into a near-unprecedented phenomenon, leveraging its characters' unique style of gameplay)
- Sans (hard to explain this one without spoilers, but this is a character of many roles in his internet phenomenon of a source game, including memorable dialogue delivered in a distinctive style)
- Space Invader (the original disposable goon that spawned and attacked the player en masse, well before the likes of the Slime and Goomba; also inadvertently created the concept of difficulty as we know it in video gaming, by way of them becoming faster as fewer of them were on the screen, thanks to programming limitations - furthermore, to this day, it's a prominent symbol of video gaming in general, particularly among older audiences)
- The Avatar (I would suggest a mid-pack seed; see post #49 for my reasoning)
- Weighted Companion Cube (Portal's plot development pulled off the unprecedented feat of emotionally attaching the player to this inanimate object, even giving it implied characterization)

Characters to Consider Removing

- Aigis (I don't see a robot developing humanity in a cult hit as terribly influential, even by the standards of video gaming, a medium where such character progression isn't dime-a-dozen)
- Lloyd Irving (I believe Crono and especially Sora pretty much obsolete Lloyd's twin niches of the idealistic JRPG protagonist who holds his ideals the whole game and a pioneering character in terms of establishing action-RPG gameplay)
- Saber (just not a very influential character overall, and not one who belongs in this bracket, in my opinion; maybe I'm just out of the loop about her importance, though, and I suppose she is a principal symbol of the modern gacha trend)
- Strider Hiryu (really, it's fellow Capcom character Dante who's the very image of the cool protagonist rather than Strider, and as you mentioned, his series never went beyond a cult hit)
- Zangief (for the reason you mentioned, of him not innovating grappler gameplay)

Part 2 will be in another post.
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Hail the reigning Guru champ, Advokaiser!
You proved yourself more statistically metal-minded than I ever have been - well done!