Board 8 > ~*~Zen Anal-yzes the Summer 2013 Contest - 5 Years Too Late Edition~*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

ZenOfThunder posted...

Over the past few years the line between the Nintendo, Mega Man and Sonic fandoms has definitely become was more blurred. While Eggman had no shot to beat either of these guys, it's interesting to speculate how many votes he pulled from the other two.

Reminds me of this comic:

http://ebw.thecomicseries.com/images/comics/145/36194a1520989232f1420265686.png

Epona is basically the worst thing B8 has ever done in a contest
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KamikazePotato posted...

Epona is basically the worst thing B8 has ever done in a contest

do we blame Hogger on B8

that's still the most depressing match result of the last decade
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Hogger was definitely not a B8 thing. That was weird WoW rally
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yeah but Albion was the one trying to push the rally

between sandwiches that is
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UltimaterializerX posted...

ZenOfThunder posted...

thank you Ulti but your writeups are the only ones that should be there, they're contest tradition and honestly I sometimes look forward to your post-contest analysis more than a contest itself

also I doubt I'll even finish this, as Leon pointed out I don't even remember a lot of this contest, especially the later matches

Eh even an unfinished nostalgia trip is better than nothing. Always good to have you around bruh.

Do you guys not understand ego trip when you see it or what

Zen's write ups even now are full of humor and knowledge

Ultis are full of ego and sewage

Guy says right away "put yours in bit mine have to be first !!!!!"

Then later when Zen is humble ulti is like "oh whatever no worries"

It's like preschool children getting mad
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I don't really like to consider Albion as part of B8
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BTW Zen great topic dude it's awesome as a refresher.

Sorry boogie2188 is bothering you
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KamikazePotato posted...

I don't really like to consider Albion as part of B8

I mean he's a dark part of our history but a part of it nonetheless
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Even if we roll with that, was anyone on B8 besides him pushing for it? Epona had huge support, Phoenix Wright had huge support, even L-Block had huge support. Those are B8 projects, or at least B8 supported. One dude doesn't really count.

Also: Ike is forever doomed to be the guy that 'disappoints' because he doesn't live up to expectations that have never matched up with his actual strength. Proto Man actually did pretty decently in 2010 and Ike was only a little above him in the stats.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

How did N get into a contest?

Sup.

I made a nomination topic about him and people humored me. I figured people loved Black and White, they loved how Pokemon had an actual decent story for once, and the N was a liked character.

Then the match happened and ahahahaha....

https://imgur.com/outO2z7
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In fact, as proof, straight from NGamer's Xstat website:

Ike (2010c) has a strength of 26.54 against Base Link.
Proto Man (2010c) has a strength of 25.72 against Base Link.

Ike - 51.54%
Proto Man - 48.46%
Ike wins with 51.54% of the vote!
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yeah both Ike and Marth are low midcarders (or were as of 5 years ago) but people think they should be more so you end up with them being disappointed that Ike nearly lost to Protoman or shocked that Marth lost to Phoenix
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Well, while I wasn't surprised by Phoenix beating Marth, the degree to which he beat him was pretty wild. Phoenix definitely got a good bit stronger in 2013. Not bad for the guy who broke GFNW and barely squeaked past Bomberman.
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I wonder if Fire Emblem Heroes would have any impact on the FE characters this upcoming contest?

Granted that would have to be from Reddit or something because the FE people on Gamefaqs are....

Yeah.
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Also I actually made some adjusted 2013 stats a while back which are I think are faaairly accurate. At least as accurate as 2013 stats can be. The funny thing is even if you remove Draven, 2013 has some absurd results that completely disregard previous contests. For example, Tifa is rated clearly higher than Cloud, which sounds like an anomaly except that Tifa performed consistently amazing in all 3 of her matched while Cloud did the opposite. Would Tifa beat Cloud? Extremely doubtful, but she sure made it look like she should.
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I really wish that random L-Block rally hadn't pushed it past Auron. Tifa/Auron would've been really interesting to see, and we knew Samus was winning that match anyway (although Tifa held her own against her yet again).

Tifa does seem to be the one FFVII character who seems immune (or at least it's happening at a slower rate) to game's decline since 2010 (for a couple notable reasons).
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It's difficult to say that Auron beats Tifa that year, because even if you remove the rally and put L-Block as about equal to Auron, Tifa cleanly beat L-Block in the next round and did really well on Samus. Tifa was on roids that year. Trashed Chun-Li, trashed Yuna, ect.

And yeah, every other FF7 character did bad. Vincent easily did the worst. By a lot. Stats have him cleanly losing to Fox, Rikku...Epona, ect.
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Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't think it's a given Auron would've beaten her, so I would've liked to see how it played out.
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Dark Young Link posted...

ZenOfThunder posted...

How did N get into a contest?

Sup.

I made a nomination topic about him and people humored me. I figured people loved Black and White, they loved how Pokemon had an actual decent story for once, and the N was a liked character.

Then the match happened and ahahahaha....

https://imgur.com/outO2z7

I was happy and surprised that N made it but he was about as weak as I thought
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Thanks to everyone here for participating in actual contest discussion! It's good to see users other than Luster Soldier back in the spirit of things. So 50% of this topic's goals are successful, now I just need to raise enough noms for Metal Sonic. I think we'll be here a while.

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(3)Shulk vs (16)Ratchet vs (25)Altair




If I told you that there was a secret pic Shulk could get that would instantly double, nay, triple his expected vote total, would you believe me? Would anyone on this board believe a pic could be that strong?

KamikazePotato and the rest of the Xenoblade fans on this board would have you believe that this was the key:



Yes, the key to Shulk's victory was-- Shit, I should be more specific here. It wasn't a bad child-size cosplay of Shulk. It was this thing:



The Monado! People were convinced that if someone could squeeze this giant red phallus into a match pic with Shulk that he would at least be able to beat Ratchet, perhaps even proven multi-way contest veteran Altair!

After a few days of bad pic submissions, KP found the best Picsmith for the job:



KP, the ultimate weapon wasn't the Monado, it was your heart all along.

So Shulk got what was considered the best possible picture, and... lost. Lost pretty hard. I had fallen for all the Shulk hype and taken him over Ratchet in my Expert bracket. Whoops. To be fair, KP is right a lot of the time and he's pretty convincing, and that XENOFEAR got to me.

It actually wasn't crazy to consider Ratchet weak enough to lose to Shulk. He had lost to Thrall once, and failed to double Eddie Riggs. Since 2013, Ratchet has received a bad movie and a good, albeit short, movie tie-in game. Where is his strength now? Probably the same, but I don't mind seeing him in these things.

Altair once again has a decent contest showing. It's astounding that the basically personality-void protagonist of the first ever Assassin's Creed game is still one of very few reps the series has had in this contest. People don't even like the first AC or Altair in general anymore. Outside of Ezio, there really isn't any better pick, though.

(4)Lara Croft vs (15)Yuri Hyuga vs (24)Slime




Poor Yuri, he almost got septupled by Samus in his first ever appearance then took a loooong nap and got woken up with Lara Croft's gun in his face. Stick him in the freezer, Lara!



Lara was coming off of her hot new reboot game where she looked like Alicia Vikander, the only woman worthy of Michael Fassbender's love. Wait, I think I got my timeline wrong...

Regardless, people now take Lara seriously now despite ridiculous scenarios like her murdering 300000 people then getting real real sad cuz she killed a deer. I get it, it's a video game, but other video games do "being a video game" way better. Having Lara grunt a lot and talk to herself sarcastically is enough to get her onto Nathan Drake's level I guess. Should have gone all the way and gotten Nolan North to voice her.

Slime finally made a contest appearance and even though it was nice to see copious Dragon Quest reps make the field, unlike Final Fantasy people don't seem to particularly care for that series' characters here, even its mascot. Maybe Jessica from DQVIII would do alright? Boobs.
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My Boi Slime !!!

With the highly anticipated new DQXI coming to NA let's get him back in the contest or a different mainline character
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How much better would Shulk do after being in Smash?
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Shulk would do a lot better after Smash and Xenoblade just being higher profile in general. How much better...? Well I'd totally take him over Ratchet again !!
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That and the 3DS port of his game probably help but Smash appearances just aren't gonna matter as much as they used to. I'd expect Altair to have declined a good deal in the last 5 years too. Rerun that poll and I'd guess the order stays the same but all three of them finish much closer together.
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good stuff so far zen. tag
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I care about Slime very much!

I think I actually took Slime to win there, but mostly because I wanted it to happen rather than because I thought it was super likely. I definitely didnt think Lara would beat it by 25%, though.
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(7)Kefka vs (12)Zack Fair vs (21)Ryu Hayabusa




Kefka always gives me writer's block. I never know how the hell to talk about this guy. He's the king of inconsistency. In my last writing project I stalled for almost two weeks trying to think about what to say about Kefka.

So instead I'm going to talk about how cool it is that Allen made the dimensions of the match pictures 299 x 187. He could have made it 300 x 187 but Character Battle IX whoa what an easter egg better put it in my shitty clickbait article with a picture of Morrigan's boobs and a giant red arrow pointing to nothing

Let's talk about how great Zack the Living Buster Sword looked here. I went on a big rant last post about how the Monado ended up amounting to nothing, but here's the Buster Sword pulling so much support from Kefka that it managed to get Zack into second over Ryu Hayabusa, a proven contest vet that's looked good in a ton of situations over the years.

Maybe Kefka was really just that weak, or maybe Zack really is just that strong. I find it hard to get reads on either of them, because FF looked so bad this contest that I feel like I can't be sure of anything. Usually Ulti and Leon are better at analyzing FF's popularity trends.

At least this was an entertaining match. Kefka never fails to disappoint. I remember having some big projects due in college this week so my memory is a little blurry for some of these matches, so if anyone has personal anecdotes relating to them please jump in and share.




Imagine coming to this site not having played Metal Gear Rising and trying to figure out why the fuck a US Senator with a big cigar and a nice suit is in a GameFAQs character battle. Then you go to the totals page and see his bio pic with the weird Resident Evil growth all over his chest. What the hell is up with this guy? Short answer:

NANOMACHINES, SON.

As far as video game memes going around in 2013, that was one I really liked. I didn't even play Revengeance; I don't have patience for parrying or anything, but shit, Armstrong and Jetstream Sam are the raddest characters and I wish they were canon. Then again, nothing in MGS is really canon anymore, right?

It's hard to believe it's been so long since Revengeance dropped. It feels like just yesterday. Yet the more time goes on the more it seems to become overlooked and forgotten. You can't even play it legally on Macs anymore: https://bit.ly/2ntVfRi

Back to the point: Armstrong is cool but not cool enough to be doubled by Prinny of all things. Is Prinny stronger than Laharl at this point? Would Etna play to the pedo crowd of GameFAQs and pull in more support? Will any Disgaea rep even make the field ever again?

The big takeaway from this match is how Cloud couldn't pull off 70% in a Round 1 match against two of the most bottom-of-the-barrel fodder characters this contest has ever seen. Yeah, there were low votals and yeah, FF gets anti-voted, but it shouldn't matter much. If you hadn't already lost faith in FF by this point, now was the time to worry.
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Man I had forgotten how bad FF looked like.

Part of me still remembered though, I think, which is why I didn't pick 1997 to get too far in the years contest.

ZenOfThunder posted...

and failed to double Eddie Riggs.

hey now

Ratchet got 68%

He also got 44% on Jecht the next round so he's high end fodder at this point

also that Yuri Hyuga result makes me sad

he needed that final update to get to double digits in percentage
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(6)Handsome Jack vs (13)Frog vs (22)Viewtiful Joe




Here's a fun match that was kind of debated for a bit. I say "kind of" because most people assumed Borderland 2's main antagonist, Handsome Jack, would easily beat Viewtiful Joe, the dude who let everyone down when he lost to Tails in 2004.

Since 2004 Joe had made a few sparse appearances, the most recent at that time being Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He wasn't really used competitively and nobody cared. On the flip side, Borderlands 2 did really well in the GameFAQs GOTY polls. No brainer, right?

Well, Frog was in the match (good on him for breaking 50%), so by law, it needs to be entertaining. Handsome Jack was the jobber this time, and Joe once again fucked over a lot of brackets.

In other news, I recently did a playthrough of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel as Jack's body double, and holy shit is that game so much worse than Borderlands 2. It's amazing how adding one mechanic can ruin a game. Yeah, let's set the game on the moon and give the player a limited oxygen supply that also drains when they double jump or do slam attacks. Let's limit exploration by making players have to run from oxygen supply to oxygen supply. They'll never be able to relax because they'll always be thinking about the ever-diminishing number in the bottom left of their screen. Some people defend this mechanic and say it adds to the game.

What a crock of shit. Also this incredibly annoying 7-second voice clip would play CONSTANTLY as Jack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jdnJkU9Z5M" data-time="

I almost quit and started over to get a new character. I'm happy Jack lost here. Hope Borderlands 3 doesn't suck! And that it comes out! Gearbox is probably looking for more companies to scam like they did with SEGA and Colonial Marines. Maybe they'll buy another game in development hell and cobble together a poorly-coded release like they did with Duke Nukem Forever for some quick cash to make up for the millions they lost on Battleborn.

(9)Sly Cooper vs (10)Francis York Morgan vs (19)Lugia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzvXBFwcyek" data-time="

Please keep this looping while you read, thanks.

Board 8 was super into Deadly Premonition at the time of the nom period. Well, maybe not all of Board 8, but enough to get York a decent seed. The game burned bright and as far as I can tell it isn't burning anymore. There's been no word of a sequel but I really don't think it needs one. It's astounding that a game as bizarre as DP even made it to a commercial release and any more would take away from the magic.

That said, York only managed to get around the same amount of votes as Armstrong, but they were both happy just to be on the front page for a day.

Wait...



Did you see that, Zach?!

Clear as a crisp spring morning!

"Lu Gia"...in the contest!

I knew I could count on it. Never fails.



Whose idea was it to get freaking Lugia into a Character Battle? Was he a Guru nom or something? Why? Was it to make a statement? I'd argue this is worse than N but they're both pretty bad.

There was a little bit of debate as to whether or not Sly could sneak past Lugia to win this, but when you remember he got quadrupled by Sephiroth in his debut appearance, this result was pretty obvious. This much of a slaughter, though?

If you hadn't figured it out by now, Pokefear was very, very real. I'm not sure how widespread that term was before and after this match, but there was no doubt denying it existed after this.

Also I think Sly has a movie coming who cares
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ZenOfThunder posted...

Whose idea was it to get freaking Lugia into a Character Battle? Was he a Guru nom or something?

It was indeed

ZenOfThunder posted...

Why? Was it to make a statement?

because B8 can't get enough of Pokemon

hot predix: all five winners from the NRT will be Pokemon
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Christ. I forgot Lugia was even in it
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(2)Dante vs (17)Laharl vs (26)Raz




iirc I used a Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne pic for Dante just because I wanted to post it in the Picsmith thread with this under it:



I think I got one person who humored me with a "haha" and then Allen used the pic. Kids, never meme and pic. Although it does look pretty dope.

We were coming off of DmC: Devil May Cry by this point and the wounds were still fresh. I hear that game got reworked a bit on PC and is actually really good, but it was so divisive that I doubt its original band of haters would ever admit that.

But back in 2013, we were all worried that a potential bad pic paired with bad buzz would ruin Dante's chances to beat Squirtle in R2. Again, Pokefear was super real and Dante was the king of letdowns. He's had some good runs, but he also choked to Yoshi and Ryu, lost to Master Chief, and performed like shit against Tails.

So he got 70% on Laharl, but that doesn't mean much if you can't beat Yoshi. It was assumed that Dante would have a rough time and if he beat Squirtle it would only be by a little. Nobody knew how bad Squirtle would expose Dante in R2.

Also, nice to see Raz. Hot damn does he look ugly. He's just a big sack of potatoes getting used as a punching bag. I hear he has a VR game now and my only thoughts on that are "why would you want to get that close to Raz."

This is Laharl's third win, and I think it's a good way for him to end his contest run. He now has the unimpressive heads of Nathan Hale, Neku and Raz mounted on his wall. I don't think he'll ever be more successful than that. Laharl vs Vyse Grudge Match 2018, who ya got?

(5)Squirtle vs (14)Ramza Beoulve vs (23)JC Denton




JC Denton finally gets a second shot in a contest setting and gets paired with a Pokemon and a fan-favorite Final Fantasy character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuf9dM_LgCs" data-time="

Ramza's since been in a Dissidia game or two, in 2018 he'd probably still do OK. It's not like he impressed here or anything and he did get doubled by a cartoon turtle, but at least he didn't lay down and die. People were expecting much worse of a blowout, which lead to people still championing Dante > Squirtle in R2 as if DmC and Pokefear didn't exist.

Another note on the pic side of things: This is one of the first appearances of "anonymous" being credited as the contributor of a pic, AKA "we submitted nothing but shitty meme pics so Allen had to make one himself." In this case it was for Squirtle.

I think all the Picsmiths submitted for Squirtle were anime pics of him wearing his Kamina sunglasses as if he needed even more help. Sometimes I think sometimes we get too caught up in seeing what we can get away with instead of thinking what's best for the contest.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

lost to GAME FUEL

fixed

I mean the dude made it to the friggin' contest semifinals

2007 was wild

(also he beat Master Chief a year later)

in fairness to Dante in nearly all of his bad performances he's had terrible pics (he had that ridiculous Viewtiful Joe pic against Sonic in 2004, too) and he's a guy who relies a lot on looking cool
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Dante has more bad luck than anything else. His match vs. Squirtle looks perfectly normal when you realize that Squirtle (without a rally) was almost as strong as Cloud. 2013 was jacked up.

Lugia continued the long line of ??? Guru picks. Not even Pokemon fans cared about getting him in.

Kefka's result in that match was really good, Zack Fair is no joke and he dunked on Hayabusa despite Final Fantasy LFF. Honestly, it might be the single best result he's ever had.
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also Ramza should be more popular

but I guess it's fitting for his character not to be
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KamikazePotato posted...

Lugia continued the long line of ??? Guru picks.

somehow Black Turtle of all people has made the most sensible (and perhaps the only one to date) Guru pick of all time

well EC did pick Altair too but he might have gotten in anyway

actually this reminds me of how much Allen blatantly rigged the system without telling us and kept Sonic 3 & Knuckles out in 2015

Allen why do you hate this game so much

I still remember how he closed my Add/Remove topic within literally seconds in 2009
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What was BT's nom?
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It should be noted that Lugia wasn't even the actual Guru pick. He was announced as the Guru pick when the Guru was won, and this was announced by not-the-Guru when nominations went up. Then the actual Guru showed up and said he changed his pick to Yuri Lowell, but enough people either didn't get the memo or deliberately didn't change their nomination to get Lugia in.
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X vs. Zero in the Rivals Contest, which saved us from X vs. Sigma (which was the one Allen put in the database)

speaking of which Allen still deprived us of Mario vs. Sonic too
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Underleveled posted...

It should be noted that Lugia wasn't even the actual Guru pick. He was announced as the Guru pick when the Guru was won, and this was announced by not-the-Guru when nominations went up. Then the actual Guru showed up and said he changed his pick to Yuri Lowell, but enough people either didn't get the memo or deliberately didn't change their nomination to get Lugia in.

oh yeah that's right

yeah there was poor communication about this because he said for months it was going to be Lugia and then changed his mind at the last minute
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(8)Spring Breeze Dancin' vs (11)Zidane Tribal vs (20)Ridley




It always bothered me how blue Spring Breeze Dancin' is in his pic, so I went and threw an auto-level adjustment on it:



It's kind of blown out now but do you see what I mean?

[Imagine 5 minutes passing]

Alright, I can't find the fucking video of Spring Breeze Dancin's performance, but this came up in YouTube search instead??



17 million goddamn views and her name is EVERLEIGH. What the fuck kind of name is this? It's somehow worse than every kid being named some hipster variant of "Aiden." Let's adopt this garbage naming convention for the next contest. "Lyyynk," "Claughd," and "Sefeighroughth."

Spring Breeze Dancin' is apparently the bottom of the X-Stats this contest, and I'm not surprised. As far as Board 8 in-jokes go, this one is the deepest cut I think we've ever seen actually make it to the front page. Way deeper than Midgar Zolom.

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Yes, but now I am posting about how respectable Ridley looked here. Zidane was never the strongest but Ridley had been comfortably beaten by Vivi back in the day so it was strange seeing him come within 2000 votes of Zidane. I'm not going to reiterate how bad FF looked outside of the really obvious exceptions.

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Sure, Zolomy. Now sleep. I'll repost you in 2023 when I do my 5-Year-Late analysis of Summer 2018.
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LeonhartFour posted...

speaking of which Allen still deprived us of Mario vs. Sonic too

I made a feedback ticket about this and he said it was because the nomination wasn't even remotely close to Mario/Bowser, not because he was disallowing it.
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Underleveled posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

speaking of which Allen still deprived us of Mario vs. Sonic too

I made a feedback ticket about this and he said it was because the nomination wasn't even remotely close to Mario/Bowser, not because he was disallowing it.

right

because he refused to put Mario/Sonic in the database

pretty sure X/Zero was the only rivalry NOT in the database to get in

he also strongly hinted that he wouldn't allow it when we were asking about it and then said it technically wasn't disallowed afterward
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my firefighter friend is randomly in town tonight so i'm going to go grab a brewski with him. either no more posts tonight or look forward to late night zen drunkposting
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I'm not gonna lie, when the Spring Breeze Dancin' rally began I thought it was for a MLP character.
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you know what else allen deprived us of

Message From KamikazePotato on 09/23/2011

Just letting you know that it is not a joke/invalid nomination. We're using the established game of Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, where Charles Barkley is the main character and Michael Jordan is a recurring antagonist. The game and the characters in it fit all the rules of the contest, as well as the spirit.

Message From GameFAQs on 09/26/2011

Wouldn't really call them "historical characters"

Message From KamikazePotato on 09/26/2011

I think might be confused about what kind of game Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is? It's not a normal game. Charles Barkley has magic basketball powers and is traveling a post-apocalyptic world that was destroyed by a chaos dunk. Michael Jordan is the agent of an oppressive government, working to stop Barkley at every turn. They aren't just the Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan lifted from a random sports games - they're basically entirely different characters, like how games like Castlevania and Dynasty Warriors take generous liberties with Dracula and Lu Bu.

I won't press the issue again after this if it still gets shot down, but they really do fit all the rules of the contest. In a weird sort of way, but yeah.

Message From GameFAQs on 09/26/2011

I know the game - but entries like that lead to two possibilities: 1) It gets almost no votes, and goes out in the first round despite all the nominations, while keeping a better entry off the bracket, or 2) it becomes a /b/ rally point, winning and knocking out more popular entries, but alienating the majority of voters and leading to less people being interested in the contest (See: the latest GameSpot contest).

never forgive
never forget
no barkley no peace
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oh man I did forget about Barkley/Jordan getting shafted
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