Board 8 > Fourpack of Fun: Crono/Mewtwo, Sonic/Squall

(+) Yeah! (+)

I feel like Pokemon might be on the downswing. Pokemon Go is past its hype, and there's not a lot of excitement for Let's Go Pika/Eevs. That said, Crono and Squall have no reason to boost, Sonic at least had a decent game last year, so I went with him.
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Big Bob posted...

Squall has no reason to boost

KH3 hype tho
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Squall finishing last in his divisional final and doing worse against Ammy in '13 than Luigi did in '10, plus Final Fantasy VIII getting such a low seed and struggling to break 60% on a GTA game before rallies took effect (and getting a percentage in the low 60s even with rally spillover), really do not inspire much confidence.
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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Squall finishing last in his divisional final and doing worse against Ammy in '13 than Luigi did in '10, plus Final Fantasy VIII getting such a low seed and struggling to break 60% on a GTA game before rallies took effect (and getting a percentage in the low 60s even with rally spillover), really do not inspire much confidence.

Amaterasu had Okamiden and more importantly MvC3 after fighting Luigi iirc

0 surprise she gained popularity
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Oops didn't take that into account, my bad.
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I mean Squall beat Missingno with ease (which Crono couldn't do and Sephiroth struggled to do)
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One could also argue that Missingno. win makes him barely stronger than Tidus!
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but Tidus cheated so that performance overrates him...!
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Sonic Mania makes this an easy Sonic > Squall. Not enough to beat Crono though.
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Sonic hasn't been weaker than Crono in a long time though so that's an odd thing to say
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Last bump
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LeonhartFour posted...

but Tidus cheated so that performance overrates him...!

as long as we agree the cheaters weren't from Indonesia, I can work with this!

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean Squall beat Missingno with ease (which Crono couldn't do and Sephiroth struggled to do)

squall is a known rallier though.
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boy I wish

well actually I don't
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Sonic got destroyed by Mewtwo, and only looked good against Bowser because Mewtwo/Bowser SFF may have occurred. Sonic should not be the obvious winner. >_>
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I think you're wrong about who Bowser leeched in that match.
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no he isn't

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2870-division-2-round-1-bowser-mewtwo-ryu-toad

wouldn't be the first time

(please don't start throwing out this idea that Mario and Sonic characters SFF/LFF each other)

(or this idea that Pokemon somehow is immune to LFF)
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If Mewtwo leeched Bowser there and Sonic characters don't how do you explain round 2. I'm sure we agree Toad held Bowser a back a bit.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2898-division-2-round-2-auron-shadow-ryu-bowser
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Hot take: I think Pokemon Go will have hurt Pokemon in general rather than give it a boost. The sense of nostalgia that was so rampant and that helped the Gen I Pokemon so much in past contests is now replaced by tiredness and familiarity, maybe even annoyance. Many people are straight up sick of the Kanto Pokemon and it'll show.
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I dont think that sentiment exists for anyone except the people who already used the term Genwunner unironically
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I feel like the Pokemon became strong mostly due to nostalgia, and now the renewed major presence of Gen I Pokemon has diminished that greatly.
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ctesjbuvf posted...

If Mewtwo leeched Bowser there and Sonic characters don't how do you explain round 2. I'm sure we agree Toad held Bowser a back a bit.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2898-division-2-round-2-auron-shadow-ryu-bowser

I explain round 2 by saying I picked Ryu to beat Bowser there from the start and it sure as heck wasn't because "Shadow's gonna leech Bowser."

Bowser and Ganondorf got super overrated in SC2K5 by their Villains Contest performances. Neither one has looked that good since then. They had absurd prediction percentages that year, so bracket voting probably helped them out a lot.
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There was enough bracket voting in summer 2005 for Bowser to get nearly 60% in a match he shouldn't have even been very close to winning?
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Xeybozn posted...

There was enough bracket voting in summer 2005 for Bowser to get nearly 60% in a match he shouldn't have even been very close to winning?

Bowser barely got 55% on Leon Kennedy the next year (and we've seen Ryu is stronger than Leon), and only got 42.5% on perhaps the weakest Crono we've ever seen. Mega Man got less on Ryu in 2006 than Bowser got on him in 2005.

He was definitely overpowered to a pretty big degree in 2005. It wasn't necessarily "just" bracket voting, but it's pretty clear Bowser and Ganondorf were on steroids in SC2K5.
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I'm surprised a majority of people picked Crono to beat Mewtwo and even Sonic in a lot of cases. I love Chrono Trigger but surely a somewhat niche RPG from almost a quarter century ago can't have that wide an appeal anymore right?

And yes I know Chrono Trigger is beloved amongst hardcore gamers but I struggle to think of anyone in my personal life who would even have heard of it.

Also, I don't know about "not very close to winning." Ryu got 52% on Bowser in that match, so that's basically a tossup in 1-on-1 in my mind (because there's no way to tell what the distribution would be from Auron's and Shadow's votes), which is what it should've been in 2005.

Funny enough, Ryu and Bowser are near equals in the 2006 X-Stats.
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What is SFF and LFF?

SFF = Same Fanbase Factor

The idea is that two characters with the same fanbase (such as Nintendo characters or FF characters) can cause a disproportionate overlap favoring one character over the other, such as Link getting 88% on Ganondorf because Nintendo fans overwhelmingly favor Link.

LFF = Leeching Fanbase Factor

It's basically SFF for multi-way matches, although this one tends to hurt the stronger character because they're getting votes "stolen" from them by the weaker character. What's being suggested here is that Bowser lost to Ryu because he had votes taken away from him by Shadow or he hurt Sonic by taking votes away from him.
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Ah OK makes sense. You guys really get into these things eh lol

well we've been talking about these things for 16 years now so yeah we've had lots of time to talk things over and figure things out
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WitcherGeralt posted...

I'm surprised a majority of people picked Crono to beat Mewtwo and even Sonic in a lot of cases. I love Chrono Trigger but surely a somewhat niche RPG from almost a quarter century ago can't have that wide an appeal anymore right?

And yes I know Chrono Trigger is beloved amongst hardcore gamers but I struggle to think of anyone in my personal life who would even have heard of it.

Chrono Trigger really is well-known and beloved enough on gamefaqs to make Crono winning those matches viable, though certainly not guaranteed. Chrono Trigger looked stronger than ever in the 2015 best game ever contest, even.
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LeonhartFour posted...

I explain round 2 by saying I picked Ryu to beat Bowser there from the start and it sure as heck wasn't because "Shadow's gonna leech Bowser."

Bowser and Ganondorf got super overrated in SC2K5 by their Villains Contest performances. Neither one has looked that good since then. They had absurd prediction percentages that year, so bracket voting probably helped them out a lot.

I think if Mewtwo really leeched Bowser, then the difference between Bowser and Ryu should've been way bigger, unless Shadow also leeched him, and even so Mewtwo couldn't have held him back by that much (unless you somehow think Toad and Bowser don't overlap a lot).

Whether or not Ryu or Bowser is stronger is different debate.
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I mean Toad only got 10% of the vote. He's not stealing THAT much from Bowser either way. I'm sure he hurt him a little, but the impact was probably fairly minimal.

Ryu and Bowser's relative strengths is absolutely a key to this debate. Even if you want to argue Shadow did leech him, it was clearly not much compared to the round before considering Bowser was pretty close to winning anyway (especially compared to the round before where he got clobbered), unless you think Bowser should have been way ahead of Ryu without it, which there isn't much support for outside of 2005.
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Off-topic I suppose, but how has Geralt performed in these things? Has anyone else (Ciri most likely) been in the field?

Nah, we've never had a Witcher character in before. Witcher 3 did pretty well in the last Games Contest though.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6141-best-game-ever-day-23-round-2-the-witcher-3-vs-metal-gear
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WitcherGeralt posted...

Off-topic I suppose, but how has Geralt performed in these things? Has anyone else (Ciri most likely) been in the field?

he hasn't, and no
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Note that our most recent character battle prior to this was in 2013 - before Witcher 3 was released.
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