1. Chrono Trigger (1) 2. Resident Evil 4 (2) 3. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (5) 4. Super Mario Bros. 3 (4) 5. Super Mario 64 (3) 6. Super Mario World (6) 7. Super Smash Bros. Melee (7) 8. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (9) 9. Super Mario Galaxy (8) 10. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (12) 11. Metal Gear Solid (11) 12. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (14) 13. Final Fantasy VII (20) 14. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (15) 15. Final Fantasy VI (19) 16. Final Fantasy X (10) 17. Final Fantasy IX (13) 18. Paper Mario (18) 19. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (17) 20. Portal (24) 21. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (16) 22. Tales of Symphonia (NR) 23. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (NR) 24. Star Fox 64 (NR) 25. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations (NR)
Dropped out: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (21), Super Metroid (22), Batman: Arkham Asylum (23), Half-Life 2 (25)
Also receiving votes:
32 - Half-Life 2 31 - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest 30 - Metroid Prime 30 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl 24 - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 22 - Mario Kart 64 11 - Batman: Arkham Asylum 10 - Okami 3 - Super Metroid
As one might expect, Rivalry Week causes some shakeups in the Top 25. Mario games now comprise over half of the top 10, the FF games are all bunched together, and the bottom 4 games of the Top 25 are all new, tied for the most new games in the rankings all season. There were also 4 games within 5 points of T&T for that 25th spot, so it was a very tight race!
475 - Chrono Trigger 448 - Resident Evil 4 409 - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow 409 - Super Mario Bros. 3 393 - Super Mario 64 382 - Super Mario World 368 - Super Smash Bros. Melee 324 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 321 - Super Mario Galaxy 286 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 285 - Metal Gear Solid 234 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 225 - Final Fantasy VII 203 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 193 - Final Fantasy VI 179 - Final Fantasy X 170 - Final Fantasy IX 151 - Paper Mario 140 - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 101 - Portal 86 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 72 - Tales of Symphonia 57 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 36 - Star Fox 64 35 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations 32 - Half-Life 2 31 - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest 30 - Metroid Prime 30 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl 24 - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 22 - Mario Kart 64 11 - Batman: Arkham Asylum 10 - Okami 3 - Super Metroid
CT is finally a unanimous #1. The top 20 games or so were fairly consensus on most people's ballots. It was those last five spots that saw so much variety.
Also worth noting is that 24 of SF64's 36 points came from just two ballots.
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vcharon posted... Sadly people forgot TT just jobbed out to TWEWY apparently; what a difference a week makes.
I'm personally much more perplexed at how SF64 got a ranked spot because two people ranked it 12th. I understand ballots are personal and all, but really... that's stretching it quite a bit.
Well, for what it's worth, 35 points is the fewest points a game has needed to make the top 25 since the early weeks of the contest when not nearly as many people were voting.
But oh well it has not lost to anything that I don't see becoming an all-time favorite of mine yet (or, in LttP's case, is an all-time favorite of mine) so whatever. Losing to MK64 would be a good deal worse, but I'm still okay with it.
Samus wants payback though, and she's going to shoot down Mario and his friends this week while they're racing for joy. Just you wait and see.
Guys, I have been putting Half-Life 2 and Star Fox 64 in the Top 15 for like 4-5 weeks now. It should honestly not come as any surprise after all this time
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
LeonhartFour posted... Nearly half of HL2's points came from one ballot as well.
Yeah, that last question did sort of invalidate that question I had that I didn't think I should ask until it was over, and that was "what's the fewest average points per ballot for a game that was listed on at least half the ballots?" Through 18 votes, HL2 was listed on 9 people's ballots--exactly half--but 6 of those 9 were 25th-place votes, which I found to be absolutely hilarious.
We can only hope.
But SF64 is 1-1 when it's ranked. Kinda surprised this is only its third week in the Top 25.
Not too surprising to me, actually. SF64 was getting close early on, but then it lost to SoulCalibur II and there might have even been one week where it didn't get any votes (I don't think so; most of the time it was on my ballot, albeit fairly low for awhile, and I think one of the weeks that I took it off, someone else put it at #25). Then it started to build momentum once its early opponents started looking legitimately good (TWEWY, FFVIII, SCII) and it had the OT loss to RBY (I'm not entirely sure, but I think there had still been other people besides me voting RBY #1 before it needed OT to beat SF64), and after the win against then-undefeated Paper Mario, that was the catalyst.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
LeonhartFour posted... Well, there's the fact that TWEWY keeps looking better and better with each passing week, and T&T did get a quality win against Batman.
Plus, the bottom 3-4 spots were wide open anyway. You could argue some of the games that narrowly missed deserved it more, but it's fairly close.
Yeah, you could make a case for just about any of them.
Half-Life 2...well, it has a 13-2 record and is on a 10-game winning streak, but it doesn't really have much in the way of quality wins, and it just put up a very lackluster win against a GTA game.
DKC2 has the quality wins, and its three losses are all to ranked games, so...yeah, looks like a decent case. Granted, none of its wins are against currently ranked games, but SMW2 was ranked just last week! MM2 has been ranked recently, too. So they're not exactly bad.
Metroid Prime...Metroid Prime is kind of like FFVII was up until last week, but with less inherent strength (by which I mean that FFVII had a fairly high preseason ranking while Prime started the season unranked). 13-2 record is nice, losses to SMB3 and Wind Waker are...wait, Wind Waker? FFVII's two losses were to SMB3 and Ocarina of Time! Okay, so it doesn't even have the strength of losses. As for wins, well, its best win from a quality of opponent standpoint is Rivalry Week 1 against Half-Life 2. Beyond that...well, take your pick. Well, no, I'll give you Uncharted 2, which is 10-5 (I didn't even realize that it had 10 wins...even though its level of competition is not great, 10-5 is not too shabby at all.) But it's not a spectacular schedule for MP.
Brawl...also 13-2, pretty good losses, has some wins over decent games like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. No wins over ranked games, but certainly decent.
SMW2...it got crushed last week, but that's rivalry week and there's obvious SFF. It also lost to DKC2 in a rivalry week, and it had the close loss to FFX. Good wins...Majora's Mask stands out, but there are some other pretty decent ones. And technically, it has two wins against ranked opponents, although that was kind of luck of the scheduling (FE7 had just become ranked when SMW2 faced it, and it hasn't been ranked since). But that blowout loss hurts.
You could make a case for any of them.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
From: KCF0107 | #013 Guys, I have been putting Half-Life 2 and Star Fox 64 in the Top 15 for like 4-5 weeks now. It should honestly not come as any surprise after all this time
Doesn't mean it's not a horrible decision.
Because it is.
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It's kind of a shame that SF64 is facing such a strong opponent this week, though; it'd be so cool if it were still ranked when its remake came out, and that would be during Week 17.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
LeonhartFour posted... Doesn't mean it's not a horrible decision.
And I don't mind if you or others feel that way but there's no need for people to berate me on a weekly basis for something that just amounts to a difference in opinion. I have never made a condescending remark on someone's ballot, well I don't look at other ballots anyway but that's besides the point!
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
Well, if you're going to make a very, very unorthodox opinion, then you're going to get called out because this is more than just "I like this game better." You're voting for "I think this game is better in this contest than that game."
And nobody agrees HL2 is a borderline top 10 game, and there's really zero reason to think it is.
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Oh, if I was doing a ballot on "which games I like better" then my Top 10 would look something like this:
1. Super Mario World 2. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 3. MVP Baseball 2005 4. GTA: San Andreas 5. Dragon Quest VIII 6. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 7. God of War II 8. Assassin's Creed II 9. Killer7 10. Crash Team Racing
Chrono Trigger, Symphony of the Night, FFVII, and FFX would never appear on my ballot if I used bias.
People just have different ways of thinking and seeing things. I just don't understand why a select few users haven't come to terms with that. They don't have to like what they see from others, but they don't have to open their mouth to every little thing that they don't agree with
Edit: originally said "Top 25" instead of "Top 10"
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
From: KCF0107 | #023 People just have different ways of thinking and seeing things. I just don't understand why a select few users haven't come to terms with that. They don't have to like what they see from others, but they don't have to open their mouth to every little thing that they don't agree with
It's not about not liking it.
It's about flat out not understanding it because it doesn't make sense.
Going along the lines with what I was just talking, you may not understand what you see, but the person who created that, is this case the ballot, more often than not has a great understanding of what they presented
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
From: KCF0107 | #026 Going along the lines with what I was just talking, you may not understand what you see, but the person who created that, is this case the ballot, more often than not has a great understanding of what they presented
Perhaps you're not getting what I'm hinting at, so I'll just outright say it.
Explain your reasoning for Half-Life 2.
And I hope it's more than "Well it's 13-2."
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LeonhartFour posted... Explain your reasoning for Half-Life 2.
Well, that's hard to say, not just for this game but for any other game that I have or have not tanked. I do not use some custom-made, complex equation to determine who gets ranked and in what spot. I do not have a 30-step process to determine who gets ranked and in what spot. I do not look at previous polls. I do not save my ballots or record them so I do not look at what I did in the past. I simply use the docs and you provide and my head to determine my ballots.
I spend upwards of 30-35 minutes to complete my ballot. I take every game and start eliminating them by those that I am certain or not worthy of a Top 25 placement and the rest are separated into "fringe" and "qualified" candidates and if there are 25 or more in the latter department, then the ones that I wasn't so sure about are automatically gone. Then I give everything in the doc another look through to determine who makes the final cut and their final placement. So how do I decide everything? Record, schedule, and victory/loss margins all play major roles in it, but what ultimately happens is that I ask myself, "Does this look right? Do I feel comfortable placing this game in front of that one?" That's why I am almost fully satisfied with my ballot when I post it. There were two weeks when I forgot a major game that I would have put in my Top 10, but I found out my error before it was too late on both occasions.
So I know that I haven't answered your question the way that you would like and that this will likely not satisfy you much at all, but this is honestly how I operate when it comes to forming my ballot for the week. I know that this may be perceived as unorthodox but I willing to explain how I come up with the ballot and I think that there's nothing for me to be "ashamed" of in the least bit.
I can assure you that I do not use bias, I hope everyone has now realized that the MVP Baseball stuff is just me being silly trying to promote the game, because that would be a complete waste of time as the ballots amount to nothing for the most part as it's the results that matter.
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
swirIdude posted... Remember who you're talking to!
Do you still think that I go solely by records? If someone has saved my ballots for some reason, that will easily prove that belief to be far from the truth
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"Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?" -Royal "Oh sure, walk to the sun"- Guybrush
Damn, that is some crazy update. MGS barely ahead and PW1 losing? Although MMX performing well against MGS is fine by me; it makes SF64 look that much better.
(And no, this is not "talking about results prematurely", this is talking about the update.) In fact...
SPOILERS
...only one of those two statements is even true any more. I won't say which one, even with my spoiler tag, but one of those is no longer true.
th3l3fty posted... it's too bad there are so few top 25 voters
it'd be be a lot easier to just toss a few ballots if there were a more reasonable number!
Yeah, well, I guess a lot of people feel it's not worth the effort and/or risk of ridicule. I've noticed that for all of the things he says in the discussion topics to earn ridicule, LMS hasn't submitted a Top 25 ballot for the past four or five weeks.
I, on the other hand, don't mind expressing controversial opinions on the internet. Hell, due to how shy I am IRL, I practically thrive on sparking heated internet discussions!
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
LeonhartFour posted... Oh, for all you Melee > Brawl supporters, did Brawl winning yet another Board 8 Melee vs. Brawl poll get you nervous again, hmm?
LOL rSFF.
Besides, I'd sooner imagine Melee winning just because "Brawl won the other poll!". Then again, Melee seems like it will remain a two-loss game going into conference play while Brawl...will likely suffer at least one more loss.
Oh, for all you Melee > Brawl supporters, did Brawl winning yet another Board 8 Melee vs. Brawl poll get you nervous again, hmm?
I think it's been pretty clear that if you poll the entire board Brawl is going to edge out Melee, at least based on all of the Brawl vs. Melee polls. Of course Melee winning is still possible here, you just need the right combination of people voting.
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BOP Results: http://charmander6000.webs.com/GotD%20BOP.xls Congratulations to Black Turtle for winning the guru contest.
Assassin's Creed II (Patriot Time Portals Conference) (10-6) – 19 (46.34%) Valkyria Chronicles (Brawl for Broke Conference) (11-5) – 22 (53.66%) --Valkyria Chronicles wins a match between two games heading in different directions in terms of their records.
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Nintendo Objections Conference) (6-10) – 19 (44.19%) The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Zelda Overload Conference) (10-6) – 24 (55.81%) --Kirby 64 put up a good fight, but Link's Awakening managed to keep it at bay.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Twilight Barrel Galaxy Conference) (11-5) – 32 (71.11%) Halo 2 (Metroid Eater Conference) (3-13) – 13 (28.89%) --A Halo game is usually good for what ails you if you've been struggling.
SoulCalibur II (Games of the Decades Conference) (11-5) – 18 (40.91%) #14 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Nintendo Objections Conference) (14-2) – 26 (59.09%) --SC2 hung in there for a while, but PW1 eventually pulled away for the win.
Civilization IV (Sonic Overload Conference) (10-6) – 17 (41.46%) Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (Cult RPG Galaxy Conference) (8-8) – 24 (58.54%) --Dragon Quest V gets up to .500 with an easy win over Civ 4.
#11 Metal Gear Solid (Zelda Overload Conference) (15-1) – 25 (56.82%) Mega Man X (Fanservice Conference) (11-5) – 19 (43.18%) --MMX actually had a 1 vote lead late in the match, but MGS1 went on an 8-0 run to finish the match and seal the win.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Games of the Decades Conference) (10-6) – 31 (77.50%) Dark Cloud 2 (Smash Trigger Conference) (5-11) – 9 (22.50%) --MGS2 has no problems taking care of business against Dark Cloud 2.
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (Smackdown Hotel Conference) (12-4) – 34 (77.27%) Shining Force II (Games of the Decades Conference) (5-11) – 10 (22.73%) --Mario RPG blows Shining Force II out of the water.
Max Payne (Games of the Decades Conference) (2-14) – 14 (37.84%) Jet Force Gemini (Smash Trigger Conference) (6-10) – 23 (62.16%) --JFG puts a hurting on Max Payne.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Brawl for Broke Conference) (14-2) – 31 (65.96%) WWF No Mercy (Smackdown Hotel Conference) (4-12) – 16 (34.04%) --Solid Snake lays the smack down on No Mercy.
Lunar: Silver Star Story (Tanooki Blitzball Conference) (9-7) – 19 (46.34%) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Twilight Barrel Galaxy Conference) (7-9) – 22 (53.66%) --San Andreas goes on a late run to overtake Lunar and get the win.
Mother 3 (Sonic Overload Conference) (9-7) – 22 (52.38%) Worms: Armageddon (Patriot Time Portals Conference) (5-11) – 20 (47.62%) --Worms got off to a hot start, but Mother 3 slowly but surely came back and got the win.
Mega Man 3 (Patriot Time Portals Conference) (7-9) – 18 (39.13%) Sonic Adventure 2 (Sonic Overload Conference) (14-2) – 28 (60.87%) --SA2 takes out a Mario game and a Mega Man game in back to back weeks! Top 25 on the horizon...?
Guitar Hero II (Sonic Overload Conference) (1-15) – 10 (21.28%) #9 Super Mario Galaxy (Twilight Barrel Galaxy Conference) (14-2) – 37 (78.72%) --Galaxy scores the blowout of the day against Guitar Hero II.
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