Board 8 > ~Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Retro Summer 2008 Analysis!~

Topic List	Page List: 1, 2, 3, 4
PostContestUlti 12/02/20 11:47:49 PM #1:	I've put this off long enough. 12 years, in fact! But I'm getting surgery tomorrow and need something to do, so why not a writing project? I'll have more time once I'm driven home tomorrow afternoon, so for now it's just precursor stuff. The real meat and potatoes starts tomorrow. LFG! --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947862869] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>I've put this off long enough. 12 years, in fact! But I'm getting surgery tomorrow and need something to do, so why not a writing project? I'll have more time once I'm driven home tomorrow afternoon, so for now it's just precursor stuff. The real meat and potatoes starts tomorrow. LFG! </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/02/20 11:48:08 PM #2:	Pre Contest For the wiki readers, this PCA is going to seem very odd. The reason for that is because I'm writing this over a decade after the fact, in 2020 of all years, because I was so disgusted at the thought of another LOL 4-ways contest that I almost quit doing this for good. The results are fun, but I detested the format. I actually <i>did</i> quit for awhile, but the games contest brought me back in. If the contest following this one didn't involve video games themselves instead of characters, I probably would have quit for good. Shows you how much I prefer games themselves over characters for me to bother with a PCA for <i>another</i> 4-way after this one, but I digress. 12 years later, I finally have the time and the motivation to do this thing. It won't be perfect and it'll have some strange references, not to mention it'll be missing some of the usual live anecdotes, but it's better than just having this gaping hole missing in the data. I wish I had found the will to do this earlier, but hey. It happens. There are multiple matches for 2008 that have no writeups, and as much as I hated the 4-ways, in skimming back over the contest a lot of the matches are fun enough to write about. So I figured what the heck, LFG(!) and do this thing. You wouldn't know it to read Board 8 in 2020, but believe it or not, the people here used to have something called a "sense of humor". You know how most people here are feverishly against rallies and joke characters nowadays? Well back in the mid 2000s, most of the same people were all on board. You had the occasional stick in the mud like red13n or Leonhart4 whining about rallies and jokesters even back then, but by and large Board 8 used to <i>love</i> this stuff. It showed in the nominations and final bracket. Ngamer was nice enough to tally it all up for us: https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Board_8%27s_2008_Nominations I mean look at this list. It's absurd to peek back on. 16 nominations for Tim from Braid. 33 for L-Block, even with a bunch of people rooting for it to lose later on once things got going. A bunch of other stuff that is just so out of place that it made 2008 "the fad contest". The bracket had the typical heavy hitters spread out everywhere, but the big story going into this thing was the utterly insane number of joke characters, fodder, and off-the-wall nonsense. The entire internet got in on the L-Block joke in 2007, and it felt like the internet wanted to keep the laughs going a year later. And why not? L-Block's run was the stuff of legends, because it happened back before the days of social media bandwagons and easy rallies. That thing slowly built momentum, and then exploded at just the right time. We've had rallies since then, some of which I'm in love with, but none quite like L-Block. Only Undertale's run is really comparable to what L-Block did. If you read all this and find it ridiculous, go look at the vote totals and site traffic data from back then and compare it to now. I was proven right long term, and frankly it was easy to see coming. Rallies are better for contests. End of story. I will always call those who say otherwise a bunch of liars, because I refuse to believe anyone actually enjoys contests that struggle to hit 30,000 votes in a poll. Back in 2008, every poll broke at least 121,000 votes. Most did even better. Compare that to the most recent contest that happened before I felt like writing this all up. Here is a semifinal match that was hyped up all contest long: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8040-semifinals-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-vs-elder-scrolls-skyrim 26,000 votes. That is an embarrassment. That's part of what drove me to get this done. That and having a missing PCA. In the interest of full disclosure, I was originally going to go on a huge rant about hopeful 20-somethings on the board being really idealistic and happy a decade ago, and then growing up to be unsuccessful 30-somethings stuck in the mire of joyless, liberal, woke identity politics and parlay that into why all the same people went from enjoying rallies and jokes to now hating them all. It was going to be really mean and obnoxious, but a friend of mine dying of covid last night put some perspective on things. I just don't have it in me to do that stuff anymore. I debated not including this paragraph at all, but hey, PCAs always have random nonsense in them ;) There will be rants though, no worries, just not <i>those</i> kinds of rants. Life is too short to spend it being miserable. The other major story of this contest was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the utterly insane effect it had on the bracket this year. I'm saving a lot of that for the actual matches involved, but trust me, if you weren't there for the obscene amounts of hype that game got before release, there is no possible way to quantify it. "You had to be there" is overused, but it applies here. It's like trying to describe the hype for Infinity War or Endgame. There is just no way. You had to be there. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947862882] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Pre Contest For the wiki readers, this PCA is going to seem very odd. The reason for that is because I'm writing this over a decade after the fact, in 2020 of all years, because I was so disgusted at the thought of another LOL 4-ways contest that I almost quit doing this for good. The results are fun, but I detested the format. I actually <i>did</i> quit for awhile, but the games contest brought me back in. If the contest following this one didn't involve video games themselves instead of characters, I probably would have quit for good. Shows you how much I prefer games themselves over characters for me to bother with a PCA for <i>another</i> 4-way after this one, but I digress. 12 years later, I finally have the time and the motivation to do this thing. It won't be perfect and it'll have some strange references, not to mention it'll be missing some of the usual live anecdotes, but it's better than just having this gaping hole missing in the data. I wish I had found the will to do this earlier, but hey. It happens. There are multiple matches for 2008 that have no writeups, and as much as I hated the 4-ways, in skimming back over the contest a lot of the matches are fun enough to write about. So I figured what the heck, LFG(!) and do this thing. You wouldn't know it to read Board 8 in 2020, but believe it or not, the people here used to have something called a "sense of humor". You know how most people here are feverishly against rallies and joke characters nowadays? Well back in the mid 2000s, most of the same people were all on board. You had the occasional stick in the mud like red13n or Leonhart4 whining about rallies and jokesters even back then, but by and large Board 8 used to <i>love</i> this stuff. It showed in the nominations and final bracket. Ngamer was nice enough to tally it all up for us: https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Board_8%27s_2008_Nominations I mean look at this list. It's absurd to peek back on. 16 nominations for Tim from Braid. 33 for L-Block, even with a bunch of people rooting for it to lose later on once things got going. A bunch of other stuff that is just so out of place that it made 2008 "the fad contest". The bracket had the typical heavy hitters spread out everywhere, but the big story going into this thing was the utterly insane number of joke characters, fodder, and off-the-wall nonsense. The entire internet got in on the L-Block joke in 2007, and it felt like the internet wanted to keep the laughs going a year later. And why not? L-Block's run was the stuff of legends, because it happened back before the days of social media bandwagons and easy rallies. That thing slowly built momentum, and then exploded at just the right time. We've had rallies since then, some of which I'm in love with, but none quite like L-Block. Only Undertale's run is really comparable to what L-Block did. If you read all this and find it ridiculous, go look at the vote totals and site traffic data from back then and compare it to now. I was proven right long term, and frankly it was easy to see coming. Rallies are better for contests. End of story. I will always call those who say otherwise a bunch of liars, because I refuse to believe anyone actually enjoys contests that struggle to hit 30,000 votes in a poll. Back in 2008, every poll broke at least 121,000 votes. Most did even better. Compare that to the most recent contest that happened before I felt like writing this all up. Here is a semifinal match that was hyped up all contest long: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8040-semifinals-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-vs-elder-scrolls-skyrim 26,000 votes. That is an embarrassment. That's part of what drove me to get this done. That and having a missing PCA. In the interest of full disclosure, I was originally going to go on a huge rant about hopeful 20-somethings on the board being really idealistic and happy a decade ago, and then growing up to be unsuccessful 30-somethings stuck in the mire of joyless, liberal, woke identity politics and parlay that into why all the same people went from enjoying rallies and jokes to now hating them all. It was going to be really mean and obnoxious, but a friend of mine dying of covid last night put some perspective on things. I just don't have it in me to do that stuff anymore. I debated not including this paragraph at all, but hey, PCAs always have random nonsense in them ;) There will be rants though, no worries, just not <i>those</i> kinds of rants. Life is too short to spend it being miserable. The other major story of this contest was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the utterly insane effect it had on the bracket this year. I'm saving a lot of that for the actual matches involved, but trust me, if you weren't there for the obscene amounts of hype that game got before release, there is no possible way to quantify it. "You had to be there" is overused, but it applies here. It's like trying to describe the hype for Infinity War or Endgame. There is just no way. You had to be there. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 11:27:25 AM #3:	Division 1 Round 1: Cecil Harvey, Jade Curtiss, Wario, and Zack Fair Cecil - 22142 [16.35%] Jade - 8023 [5.92%] Wario - 44824 [33.09%] Zack - 60472 [44.64%] Total Votes - 135461 To this day I don't know or care whether or not Tales of the Abyss is any good, despite actually owning the game. At some point I should log all the games I own that I haven't played yet, but to the point. This match had two major stories in it. One was how utterly goofy it was as a first match for a contest. In every contest leading up to this one, the first match winner, in order: Mario, Link, Mario 3, Link, Bowser, Mario, The Legend of Zelda's series, Samus, and Yoshi. Yoshi is a clear oddball in that bunch, and then this match happened. Cecil, Jade, Wario, and Zack isn't exactly the murderer's row that is LinkMarioSamus, yet here they were in all their glory setting the tone for the entire contest. And set the tone they did. That is a <i>ridiculous</i> vote total. Jade getting blown out is who cares, but I did a little homework here. If you plop Cecil's 22142 votes into the 2020 games contest, only Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey have any individual performances that are better. Isn't it nuts how far we ended up falling? A little falloff is okay, but looking back on the old polls really makes it eye-opening. The other story was Wario and Zack. Board 8 is a smart bunch, and after an entire contest where we all screwed up our fourway picks by underestimating overlapping fanbases, we all adjusted accordingly. Most of us saw Cecil and Zack in a poll together with Wario sticking out like a sore thumb, we had all played Brawl for the entire year, and we penned in Wario > Zack and moved on. A few people didn't think Cecil would hurt Zack at all and got rewarded for it big time. This poll was close for a couple minutes, but then Zack just annihilated these clowns. We would see in later rounds it was no fluke, either, but more on that when it comes time for ZackFAQs. As of this match, there wasn't much evidence that this wasn't just Zack strutting all over a bunch of garbage. It's not like Cecil and Wario have ever been worth much. Wario may have gotten second place here and advanced in the contest, but this was just an embarrassing performance by him. I know people who have played those WarioWare games defend them to death, but let's not pretend the vast majority of his popularity doesn't come from Smash -- and given Brawl plus the massive Nintendo boost, Wario should have handled his business. Let's not pretend Crisis Core was any good, either. Zack is an amazing character, but his game is garbage. I will never be convinced otherwise. Crisis Core was so bad I can't even bothered to review it, and that's WITH abusing Costly Punch to speed through it. This was just the start. The <i>real</i> king was coming in match #2. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947875291] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 1 Round 1: Cecil Harvey, Jade Curtiss, Wario, and Zack Fair Cecil - 22142 [16.35%] Jade - 8023 [5.92%] Wario - 44824 [33.09%] Zack - 60472 [44.64%] Total Votes - 135461 To this day I don't know or care whether or not Tales of the Abyss is any good, despite actually owning the game. At some point I should log all the games I own that I haven't played yet, but to the point. This match had two major stories in it. One was how utterly goofy it was as a first match for a contest. In every contest leading up to this one, the first match winner, in order: Mario, Link, Mario 3, Link, Bowser, Mario, The Legend of Zelda's series, Samus, and Yoshi. Yoshi is a clear oddball in that bunch, and then this match happened. Cecil, Jade, Wario, and Zack isn't exactly the murderer's row that is LinkMarioSamus, yet here they were in all their glory setting the tone for the entire contest. And set the tone they did. That is a <i>ridiculous</i> vote total. Jade getting blown out is who cares, but I did a little homework here. If you plop Cecil's 22142 votes into the 2020 games contest, only Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey have any individual performances that are better. Isn't it nuts how far we ended up falling? A little falloff is okay, but looking back on the old polls really makes it eye-opening. The other story was Wario and Zack. Board 8 is a smart bunch, and after an entire contest where we all screwed up our fourway picks by underestimating overlapping fanbases, we all adjusted accordingly. Most of us saw Cecil and Zack in a poll together with Wario sticking out like a sore thumb, we had all played Brawl for the entire year, and we penned in Wario > Zack and moved on. A few people didn't think Cecil would hurt Zack at all and got rewarded for it big time. This poll was close for a couple minutes, but then Zack just annihilated these clowns. We would see in later rounds it was no fluke, either, but more on that when it comes time for ZackFAQs. As of this match, there wasn't much evidence that this wasn't just Zack strutting all over a bunch of garbage. It's not like Cecil and Wario have ever been worth much. Wario may have gotten second place here and advanced in the contest, but this was just an embarrassing performance by him. I know people who have played those WarioWare games defend them to death, but let's not pretend the vast majority of his popularity doesn't come from Smash -- and given Brawl plus the massive Nintendo boost, Wario should have handled his business. Let's not pretend Crisis Core was any good, either. Zack is an amazing character, but his game is garbage. I will never be convinced otherwise. Crisis Core was so bad I can't even bothered to review it, and that's WITH abusing Costly Punch to speed through it. This was just the start. The <i>real</i> king was coming in match #2. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Anagram 12/03/20 11:32:27 AM #4:	Tag --- Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig. Started: July 6, 2005 <cite>Anagram posted [p:947875461] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Tag </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Alanna82 12/03/20 11:40:19 AM #5:	If you switch the 1 and the 4 in the number in Cecil's vote total, you get exactly 1/2 of Wario's votes.. (yeah this comment is pointless but I'm weird today) --- Don't mess with a Bunny! <cite>Alanna82 posted [p:947875765] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>If you switch the 1 and the 4 in the number in Cecil's vote total, you get exactly 1/2 of Wario's votes.. (yeah this comment is pointless but I'm weird today) </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
pjbasis 12/03/20 11:44:12 AM #6:	Is 2008 the only one you never did at this point? --- http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/B8%20Girls%202012/pjbas.png <cite>pjbasis posted [p:947875894] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Is 2008 the only one you never did at this point? </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 11:45:50 AM #7:	pjbasis posted... Is 2008 the only one you never did at this point? Yes but I'm also going to rewrite Spring 2004 sooner or later. Not because I won, but because holy shit that PCA is garbage. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947875945] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>pjbasis posted... </cite> <quote>Is 2008 the only one you never did at this point?</quote>Yes but I'm also going to rewrite Spring 2004 sooner or later. Not because I won, but because holy shit that PCA is garbage. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/03/20 11:52:35 AM #8:	I'm probably the last person you want to see posting in your topics, but to be fair you can't fault us for being sour on joke entries when contests themselves are less frequent. Seeing L-Block plow through the 2007 contest is a whole different ballgame than waiting years between contests only for rallies to derail much of the excitement we were hoping for. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947876133] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>I'm probably the last person you want to see posting in your topics, but to be fair you can't fault us for being sour on joke entries when contests themselves are less frequent. Seeing L-Block plow through the 2007 contest is a whole different ballgame than waiting years between contests only for rallies to derail much of the excitement we were hoping for. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 12:09:00 PM #9:	LinkMarioSamus posted... I'm probably the last person you want to see posting in your topics, but to be fair you can't fault us for being sour on joke entries when contests themselves are less frequent. Seeing L-Block plow through the 2007 contest is a whole different ballgame than waiting years between contests only for rallies to derail much of the excitement we were hoping for. Bro if I didn't want you here I would block you. I even kinda like you these days. Hell I just gave you a baller reference! --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947876663] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>LinkMarioSamus posted... </cite> <quote>I'm probably the last person you want to see posting in your topics, but to be fair you can't fault us for being sour on joke entries when contests themselves are less frequent. Seeing L-Block plow through the 2007 contest is a whole different ballgame than waiting years between contests only for rallies to derail much of the excitement we were hoping for.</quote>Bro if I didn't want you here I would block you. I even kinda like you these days. Hell I just gave you a baller reference! </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
SSBM_Guy 12/03/20 12:10:24 PM #10:	Tag. 2008 feels like such an odd ball contest and I genuinely don't have much memory of it. --- I feel completely refreshed. Like I just put on fresh underwear on New Year's Day. <cite>SSBM_Guy posted [p:947876718] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Tag. 2008 feels like such an odd ball contest and I genuinely don't have much memory of it. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Centurion 12/03/20 12:18:26 PM #11:	Sweet, another PCA? Christmas came early! --- ~Centurion~ http://tinyurl.com/nvurdtw <cite>Centurion posted [p:947876992] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Sweet, another PCA? Christmas came early! </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 12:19:41 PM #12:	Division 1 Round 1: Link, Luke fon Fabre, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Zidane Tribal Link - 82662 [60.72%] Luke - 8333 [6.12%] Shadow the Hedgehog - 21054 [15.47%] Zidane - 24085 [17.69%] Total Votes - 136134 Whenever Link loses a contest, and his loss in 2007 was the stuff of legends, he comes out next time in total eff you mode. Spoilers, if we combine him and his series of games, there are only two spots where he failed to be a champ twice in a row. Once was back during the Summer 2003 - Spring 2004 era. The other was the Fall 2013 - Fall 2015 era. I'll let you decide which of those is more "legitimate", but the point is Link came out this year on some Patriots 2007 noise, only he didn't have the 18-1 choke job looming. Link was winning this match. He was going to win this contest outside of a miracle. We all knew that. The real story was Shadow the Hedgehog's choke job. Most gurus have "their worst pick ever", and mine is probably picking Shadow to get through three rounds. I wasn't alone in doing it, but given what we know now it just sticks out as particularly egregious. But back in 2008, it was totally defensible. I swear! Remember, back then we only had this to work with: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1322-south-division-round-1-wario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1345-south-division-round-2-mario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2869-division-2-round-1-auron-chris-ph-shadow https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2898-division-2-round-2-auron-shadow-ryu-bowser We also had Zidane making his contest debut, and Final Fantasy 9 didn't even make the field in the 2004 games contest. There was a lot of doubt as to whether he was more popular than Tidus, who went 50-50 with our friend here. So for those who look back and see the silly guru number of 92% picking Shadow, I swear it made perfect sense. I'll also point out that I knew a weird run was coming from this part of the bracket; I just picked the wrong character to do it! :) When this match started and Zidane started to easily run away with second place, there was a lot of shock and awe setting in, but it was a pleasant shock. Board 8 loves Final Fantasy 9, so seeing a game we stan for pulling a huge upset was awesome. He built up a 2000 vote lead by morning, and once the morning vote hit and nothing happened, all fear of him being a choking dog like Magus drifted away -- and just wait until we get to <i>that</i> debacle later. Shadow would at least go out fighting. He was down by 3700 when the after school vote hit, and would end up only losing by 3000. Which was great and all, but it would still end up going down as one of the all-time contest choke jobs. Shadow would never recover from this, either. As of this writing, in the years following this all-time choke, Shadow's one and only contest win would end up being against something named Kat and some useless trash from Persona 4 in a 3-way match. Beyond that it's just a lot of nothing, and it all started right here. And for the love of all things, can we PLEASE stop putting Fails of in every contest? The games are fun and all, but Black Turtle is not wrong on this. The entire series is a waste of contest space outside of Tales of Symphonia getting like 5 minutes of run. Enough is enough. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947877038] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 1 Round 1: Link, Luke fon Fabre, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Zidane Tribal Link - 82662 [60.72%] Luke - 8333 [6.12%] Shadow the Hedgehog - 21054 [15.47%] Zidane - 24085 [17.69%] Total Votes - 136134 Whenever Link loses a contest, and his loss in 2007 was the stuff of legends, he comes out next time in total eff you mode. Spoilers, if we combine him and his series of games, there are only two spots where he failed to be a champ twice in a row. Once was back during the Summer 2003 - Spring 2004 era. The other was the Fall 2013 - Fall 2015 era. I'll let you decide which of those is more "legitimate", but the point is Link came out this year on some Patriots 2007 noise, only he didn't have the 18-1 choke job looming. Link was winning this match. He was going to win this contest outside of a miracle. We all knew that. The real story was Shadow the Hedgehog's choke job. Most gurus have "their worst pick ever", and mine is probably picking Shadow to get through three rounds. I wasn't alone in doing it, but given what we know now it just sticks out as particularly egregious. But back in 2008, it was totally defensible. I swear! Remember, back then we only had this to work with: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1322-south-division-round-1-wario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1345-south-division-round-2-mario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2869-division-2-round-1-auron-chris-ph-shadow https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2898-division-2-round-2-auron-shadow-ryu-bowser We also had Zidane making his contest debut, and Final Fantasy 9 didn't even make the field in the 2004 games contest. There was a lot of doubt as to whether he was more popular than Tidus, who went 50-50 with our friend here. So for those who look back and see the silly guru number of 92% picking Shadow, I swear it made perfect sense. I'll also point out that I knew a weird run was coming from this part of the bracket; I just picked the wrong character to do it! :) When this match started and Zidane started to easily run away with second place, there was a lot of shock and awe setting in, but it was a pleasant shock. Board 8 loves Final Fantasy 9, so seeing a game we stan for pulling a huge upset was awesome. He built up a 2000 vote lead by morning, and once the morning vote hit and nothing happened, all fear of him being a choking dog like Magus drifted away -- and just wait until we get to <i>that</i> debacle later. Shadow would at least go out fighting. He was down by 3700 when the after school vote hit, and would end up only losing by 3000. Which was great and all, but it would still end up going down as one of the all-time contest choke jobs. Shadow would never recover from this, either. As of this writing, in the years following this all-time choke, Shadow's one and only contest win would end up being against something named Kat and some useless trash from Persona 4 in a 3-way match. Beyond that it's just a lot of nothing, and it all started right here. And for the love of all things, can we PLEASE stop putting Fails of in every contest? The games are fun and all, but Black Turtle is not wrong on this. The entire series is a waste of contest space outside of Tales of Symphonia getting like 5 minutes of run. Enough is enough. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 12:21:15 PM #13:	PostContestUlti posted... Yoshi is a clear oddball in that bunch, and then this match happened. Cecil, Jade, Wario, and Zack isn't exactly the murderer's row that is LinkMarioSamus, yet here they were in all their glory setting the tone for the entire contest. My feelings are genuinely hurt, mister LMS. I extend the ultimate of olive branch and I am repaid with AVARICE?? This is war, my friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m98R3-CWOsI --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947877098] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>PostContestUlti posted... </cite> <quote>Yoshi is a clear oddball in that bunch, and then this match happened. Cecil, Jade, Wario, and Zack isn't exactly the murderer's row that is LinkMarioSamus, yet here they were in all their glory setting the tone for the entire contest.</quote>My feelings are genuinely hurt, mister LMS. I extend the ultimate of olive branch and I am repaid with AVARICE?? This is war, my friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m98R3-CWOsI </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
KCGemini 12/03/20 12:24:51 PM #14:	Tag --- Purification in progress... https://imgur.com/8Zp8mR4 <cite>KCGemini posted [p:947877238] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Tag </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Xeybozn 12/03/20 12:35:13 PM #15:	PostContestUlti posted... Remember, back then we only had this to work with: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1322-south-division-round-1-wario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1345-south-division-round-2-mario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog Shadow was also in the 2007 contest. In retrospect, seeing LFF in his match with Auron/Ryu/Bowser should have made it obvious he'd fold to Link. --- Congrats to 2020 GotD Guru champ azuarc! <cite>Xeybozn posted [p:947877569] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>PostContestUlti posted...</cite> <quote>Remember, back then we only had this to work with: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1322-south-division-round-1-wario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1345-south-division-round-2-mario-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog</quote> Shadow was also in the 2007 contest. In retrospect, seeing LFF in his match with Auron/Ryu/Bowser should have made it obvious he'd fold to Link.</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/03/20 12:47:15 PM #16:	PostContestUlti posted... Bro if I didn't want you here I would block you. I even kinda like you these days. Hell I just gave you a baller reference! Oh yeah haha. I'll apologize for calling you a bigot the one time. Albeit mostly because you don't rant about it to NEARLY the length of some people. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947878029] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>PostContestUlti posted... </cite> <quote>Bro if I didn't want you here I would block you. I even kinda like you these days. Hell I just gave you a baller reference!</quote> Oh yeah haha. I'll apologize for calling you a bigot the one time. Albeit mostly because you don't rant about it to NEARLY the length of some people. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 12:49:55 PM #17:	Xeybozn posted... Shadow was also in the 2007 contest. In retrospect, seeing LFF in his match with Auron/Ryu/Bowser should have made it obvious he'd fold to Link. Dunno what you're talking about, I listed 5 polls right from the jump <_< --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947878125] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Xeybozn posted... </cite> <quote>Shadow was also in the 2007 contest. In retrospect, seeing LFF in his match with Auron/Ryu/Bowser should have made it obvious he'd fold to Link.</quote>Dunno what you're talking about, I listed 5 polls right from the jump <_< </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/03/20 12:54:23 PM #18:	Also technically Zidane was in the 2007 contest, but he was the fourth wheel in the Alucard/Liquid/Ness threeway. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947878277] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Also technically Zidane was in the 2007 contest, but he was the fourth wheel in the Alucard/Liquid/Ness threeway. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
charmander6000 12/03/20 1:18:15 PM #19:	There was a lot of arguing regarding Zack Fair for that contest, one of the most debated characters in 2008. --- Congratulations to azuarc for winning the guru challenge <cite>charmander6000 posted [p:947879089] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>There was a lot of arguing regarding Zack Fair for that contest, one of the most debated characters in 2008. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 6:20:43 PM #20:	Division 1 Round 1: Duke Nukem, Kefka, Marth, and Niko Bellic Duke Nukem - 35984 [26.35%] Kefka - 29384 [21.51%] Marth - 40275 [29.49%] Niko - 30935 [22.65%] Total Votes - 136578 This is one of the weirdest matches to look back on in 2020, and I legit feel like my eyes are lying to me. Marth winning a debated match? Kefka in last place behind a GTA character without being portrayed as a vegetable? Duke Nukem pulling whatever the hell he pulled here? This was just all kinds of wild, and the match itself was also borderline ridiculous. This thing would be mentioned with the titans of contest lore if it had any meaning beyond round 1 fun. First, the pre-hype. I remember how heavily debated this match was pre-contest, which always tends to happen with these weird round one fodder matches for some reason. Marth was the runaway consensus favorite thanks to BrawlFEAR, which in and of itself was the precursor to the not yet seen PokeFEAR (skip to 2010 for more on that). The real fun came in trying to figure out who would win second place. There was a lot of arguing about whether or not it would be Kefka or Niko Bellic. Niko was an untested GTA character, and the last time people had faith in one of those, well.... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2067-mushroom-division-round-1-ness-vs-carl-johnson RacistFAQs was born. But fine, a lot of people just figured RacistFAQs was real and went back to 2003, when Tommy Vercetti made his debut. Vercetti wasn't some amazing character or anything, but he won a couple matches and went even with Donkey Kong. He also had that all-timer against Kefka in 2005, which to this day is one of the most flagrant examples of Smurf's vote stuffing we'd ever seen: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2084-flood-division-round-1-kefka-vs-tommy-vercetti Well Vercetti beat Kefka there, and Niko's game (GTA4) is a lot more popular than Vice City, so it stands to reason Niko should have been stronger than him. It's not like Kefka had done much of anything to instill confidence to this point, but you could go either way. What next to no one expected however was Duke Nukem going totally insane from out of literally nowhere. And I mean <i>literally</i> no where. Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle was so long and became such a meme that CJayC put him on a milk carton in his 2004 match picture against Cloud. Duke's entire contest history leading to this match was a fodder win over Iori Yagami (who?), a fluke victory over perennial contest choke artists Ike and Gordon Freeman, and whole lot of getting his ass whipped. Unless you bought into the 2007 result proving Duke is some hidden 4way star, there was <b>zero</b> indication this was coming. None. The early parts of this match were all kinds of nutty, but Marth pulled away for his expected first place finish. Past him, it was a bloodbath. Kefka and Niko fought it out close, as we sort of expected, but you also had Duke Nukem of all people right in the match for second place. After a couple updates, Niko was the first to fall off, proving yet again that Grand Theft Auto on this site would never be worth a bucket of piss. The users here just don't like that series. But then in the shocker of all shockers, Duke Nukem started putting Kefka away and <i>destroying</i> him overnight. It was not long before Duke caught and passed Kefka for good, only about an hour in, and that was that. Kefka and Niko never made a push for second after that, but Duke was not done there! Remember Marth running away with it at the beginning of the poll? He had a 700 vote lead on everyone two hours in, and no one thought much of it when Duke started stalling the lead. Overnight and leading into the morning, he started coming back to make a push for first place outright. While all this was going on, Niko was coming back on Kefka to push for third place, but third means nothing in these fourways so who really cares. Spoilers, Niko erased an 800 vote lead to win third place (whatever that's worth) and hand Kefka his latest embarrassment. By the time the morning vote hit, Duke had erased Marth's entire lead. This was in the face of BrawlFEAR, an absurd amount of Nintendo hype, and again, Duke Nukem doing NOTHING in gaming for nearly a decade. Nothing. It was one of the most random, nutty performances we'd ever seen, and had Duke pulled this off it would have been such a legendary choke job by Marth. Thankfully for him Marth caught the morning vote and put Duke down for good, but Duke was easily able to hold on to second place. I legitimately don't have the answer as to why Duke was such a random breakout star in these fourway polls. My best guess, legit, is this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3KdcTgrno It came out in 2007, and back then Ventrilo harassment was all the rage. In a contest loaded with joke entrants and people trying to get in on various jokes, who knows. Maybe this is why Duke did so well. I can't think of anything else. You got me, Duke. I got nothin'. If anyone else has a better guess, I'm all ears! (And yes I am aware going up against low midcard fodder helps.) --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947889597] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 1 Round 1: Duke Nukem, Kefka, Marth, and Niko Bellic Duke Nukem - 35984 [26.35%] Kefka - 29384 [21.51%] Marth - 40275 [29.49%] Niko - 30935 [22.65%] Total Votes - 136578 This is one of the weirdest matches to look back on in 2020, and I legit feel like my eyes are lying to me. Marth winning a debated match? Kefka in last place behind a GTA character without being portrayed as a vegetable? Duke Nukem pulling whatever the hell he pulled here? This was just all kinds of wild, and the match itself was also borderline ridiculous. This thing would be mentioned with the titans of contest lore if it had any meaning beyond round 1 fun. First, the pre-hype. I remember how heavily debated this match was pre-contest, which always tends to happen with these weird round one fodder matches for some reason. Marth was the runaway consensus favorite thanks to BrawlFEAR, which in and of itself was the precursor to the not yet seen PokeFEAR (skip to 2010 for more on that). The real fun came in trying to figure out who would win second place. There was a lot of arguing about whether or not it would be Kefka or Niko Bellic. Niko was an untested GTA character, and the last time people had faith in one of those, well.... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2067-mushroom-division-round-1-ness-vs-carl-johnson RacistFAQs was born. But fine, a lot of people just figured RacistFAQs was real and went back to 2003, when Tommy Vercetti made his debut. Vercetti wasn't some amazing character or anything, but he won a couple matches and went even with Donkey Kong. He also had that all-timer against Kefka in 2005, which to this day is one of the most flagrant examples of Smurf's vote stuffing we'd ever seen: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2084-flood-division-round-1-kefka-vs-tommy-vercetti Well Vercetti beat Kefka there, and Niko's game (GTA4) is a lot more popular than Vice City, so it stands to reason Niko should have been stronger than him. It's not like Kefka had done much of anything to instill confidence to this point, but you could go either way. What next to no one expected however was Duke Nukem going totally insane from out of literally nowhere. And I mean <i>literally</i> no where. Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle was so long and became such a meme that CJayC put him on a milk carton in his 2004 match picture against Cloud. Duke's entire contest history leading to this match was a fodder win over Iori Yagami (who?), a fluke victory over perennial contest choke artists Ike and Gordon Freeman, and whole lot of getting his ass whipped. Unless you bought into the 2007 result proving Duke is some hidden 4way star, there was <b>zero</b> indication this was coming. None. The early parts of this match were all kinds of nutty, but Marth pulled away for his expected first place finish. Past him, it was a bloodbath. Kefka and Niko fought it out close, as we sort of expected, but you also had Duke Nukem of all people right in the match for second place. After a couple updates, Niko was the first to fall off, proving yet again that Grand Theft Auto on this site would never be worth a bucket of piss. The users here just don't like that series. But then in the shocker of all shockers, Duke Nukem started putting Kefka away and <i>destroying</i> him overnight. It was not long before Duke caught and passed Kefka for good, only about an hour in, and that was that. Kefka and Niko never made a push for second after that, but Duke was not done there! Remember Marth running away with it at the beginning of the poll? He had a 700 vote lead on everyone two hours in, and no one thought much of it when Duke started stalling the lead. Overnight and leading into the morning, he started coming back to make a push for first place outright. While all this was going on, Niko was coming back on Kefka to push for third place, but third means nothing in these fourways so who really cares. Spoilers, Niko erased an 800 vote lead to win third place (whatever that's worth) and hand Kefka his latest embarrassment. By the time the morning vote hit, Duke had erased Marth's entire lead. This was in the face of BrawlFEAR, an absurd amount of Nintendo hype, and again, Duke Nukem doing NOTHING in gaming for nearly a decade. Nothing. It was one of the most random, nutty performances we'd ever seen, and had Duke pulled this off it would have been such a legendary choke job by Marth. Thankfully for him Marth caught the morning vote and put Duke down for good, but Duke was easily able to hold on to second place. I legitimately don't have the answer as to why Duke was such a random breakout star in these fourway polls. My best guess, legit, is this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3KdcTgrno It came out in 2007, and back then Ventrilo harassment was all the rage. In a contest loaded with joke entrants and people trying to get in on various jokes, who knows. Maybe this is why Duke did so well. I can't think of anything else. You got me, Duke. I got nothin'. If anyone else has a better guess, I'm all ears! (And yes I am aware going up against low midcard fodder helps.) </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
charmander6000 12/03/20 7:16:41 PM #21:	Three matches in and everyone's bracket was in shambles. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the board had yet to get full points. --- Congratulations to azuarc for winning the guru challenge <cite>charmander6000 posted [p:947891660] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Three matches in and everyone's bracket was in shambles. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the board had yet to get full points. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Anagram 12/03/20 7:25:08 PM #22:	Is this the closest we came to a 25%/25%/25%/25% match? --- Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig. Started: July 6, 2005 <cite>Anagram posted [p:947891945] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Is this the closest we came to a 25%/25%/25%/25% match? </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
charmander6000 12/03/20 7:27:52 PM #23:	No it was this match... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3470-division-7-round-1-god-of-war-gtasa-tos-oblivion --- Congratulations to azuarc for winning the guru challenge <cite>charmander6000 posted [p:947892032] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>No it was this match... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3470-division-7-round-1-god-of-war-gtasa-tos-oblivion </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Anagram 12/03/20 7:29:18 PM #24:	charmander6000 posted... No it was this match... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3470-division-7-round-1-god-of-war-gtasa-tos-oblivion I don't remember this at all, thanks. --- Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig. Started: July 6, 2005 <cite>Anagram posted [p:947892076] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>charmander6000 posted... </cite> <quote>No it was this match... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3470-division-7-round-1-god-of-war-gtasa-tos-oblivion</quote>I don't remember this at all, thanks. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 8:41:01 PM #25:	Division 1 Round 1: Altair, Guybrush Threepwood, Isaac, and Lucario Altair - 61439 [43.1%] Guybrush - 19639 [13.76%] Isaac - 29815 [20.92%] Lucario - 31653 [22.21%] Total Votes - 142546 True fact - this is the only contest Lucario ever appeared in, because his performance was such an embarrassment compared to other Pokemon that no one will invite him back. More on that in a second. The story of this match, and the guru nomination for this contest, was Altair of Assassin's Creed who was making his contest debut this year. With no seedings it was difficult to gauge where he was at relative to the field, but typically guru nominations are a random midcarder that the board loves. Who knew that Altair would be such a beast? Whenever anyone talks about this match, they talk about Lucario flopping around like a fish and almost pulling off one of the great choke jobs in contest history. They should honestly give Altair more credit, but that's how these things go. This Lucario dude was hyped beyond hype this year, especially given how Pokemon looked in 2007 and him having a Brawl appearance. Pikachu looked good. Mewtwo... sucked, but he wasn't turbo fodder or anything. Mudkip and Bidoof caught some joke love, proving that Pokemon past #151 could maybe get some contest traction going. There was always NintendoFAQs. All that given, the overwhelming consensus for this match was Lucario > Altair without a second thought. Yeah, <i>whoops.</i> It's a good thing you still advance for getting second place, because if Altair vs Lucario was a 1 on 1 deal this would have gone down as an all-time dud. Maybe not Magus levels of dud, but it would have been in the conversation. Altair <i>dominated</i> this match and got first place with the utmost of ease. It would get so much worse for Lucario, too. If you look at the poll result, you see Lucario only beating Isaac by 1800 votes. This doesn't really tell the actual story, because Lucario came dangerously close to outright losing to Isaac. After initial bracket vote power hour stuff where Lucario choked away his predicted first place finish, he started falling off. Badly. He sat there going dead even with Isaac overnight, and needed the Pokemon morning vote to bail him out of one of the most embarrassing upsets ever. The funniest thing about Isaac almost beating Lucario is he had no actual advantage Lucario didn't already have other than Golden Sun. Brawl? Isaac is only an assist trophy. Nintendo? Please. Hell even Golden Sun being a JRPG darling is dwarfed by Pokemon itself, so that's out. I know Golden Sun has a cult fanbase, but it still feels like Isaac getting this close should have been impossible. If you pretend Isaac/Lucario was a 1 on 1 match, Lucario would have only won with 51.5% of the vote based on these numbers. If 2008 was a 1v1 contest, would any Oracle have picked that? I doubt it. I'd love to give Isaac a bunch of credit here, but there was proof of him being garbage fodder even before we had 20 years of data. Altair was simply underestimated and Lucario is overhyped gutter trash. That's about all there is to it. Pokemon after #151 are only good if they joke votes, otherwise they're... well, Lucario. Thanks for playing, buddy. It was one of the worst "wins" (if you can call it that) we've ever had, and he would never be seen again after the inevitable round 2 pasting. Not gonna lie, seeing a character beloved by furries and perverts get destroyed... this does put a smile on my face. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947894249] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 1 Round 1: Altair, Guybrush Threepwood, Isaac, and Lucario Altair - 61439 [43.1%] Guybrush - 19639 [13.76%] Isaac - 29815 [20.92%] Lucario - 31653 [22.21%] Total Votes - 142546 True fact - this is the only contest Lucario ever appeared in, because his performance was such an embarrassment compared to other Pokemon that no one will invite him back. More on that in a second. The story of this match, and the guru nomination for this contest, was Altair of Assassin's Creed who was making his contest debut this year. With no seedings it was difficult to gauge where he was at relative to the field, but typically guru nominations are a random midcarder that the board loves. Who knew that Altair would be such a beast? Whenever anyone talks about this match, they talk about Lucario flopping around like a fish and almost pulling off one of the great choke jobs in contest history. They should honestly give Altair more credit, but that's how these things go. This Lucario dude was hyped beyond hype this year, especially given how Pokemon looked in 2007 and him having a Brawl appearance. Pikachu looked good. Mewtwo... sucked, but he wasn't turbo fodder or anything. Mudkip and Bidoof caught some joke love, proving that Pokemon past #151 could maybe get some contest traction going. There was always NintendoFAQs. All that given, the overwhelming consensus for this match was Lucario > Altair without a second thought. Yeah, <i>whoops.</i> It's a good thing you still advance for getting second place, because if Altair vs Lucario was a 1 on 1 deal this would have gone down as an all-time dud. Maybe not Magus levels of dud, but it would have been in the conversation. Altair <i>dominated</i> this match and got first place with the utmost of ease. It would get so much worse for Lucario, too. If you look at the poll result, you see Lucario only beating Isaac by 1800 votes. This doesn't really tell the actual story, because Lucario came dangerously close to outright losing to Isaac. After initial bracket vote power hour stuff where Lucario choked away his predicted first place finish, he started falling off. Badly. He sat there going dead even with Isaac overnight, and needed the Pokemon morning vote to bail him out of one of the most embarrassing upsets ever. The funniest thing about Isaac almost beating Lucario is he had no actual advantage Lucario didn't already have other than Golden Sun. Brawl? Isaac is only an assist trophy. Nintendo? Please. Hell even Golden Sun being a JRPG darling is dwarfed by Pokemon itself, so that's out. I know Golden Sun has a cult fanbase, but it still feels like Isaac getting this close should have been impossible. If you pretend Isaac/Lucario was a 1 on 1 match, Lucario would have only won with 51.5% of the vote based on these numbers. If 2008 was a 1v1 contest, would any Oracle have picked that? I doubt it. I'd love to give Isaac a bunch of credit here, but there was proof of him being garbage fodder even before we had 20 years of data. Altair was simply underestimated and Lucario is overhyped gutter trash. That's about all there is to it. Pokemon after #151 are only good if they joke votes, otherwise they're... well, Lucario. Thanks for playing, buddy. It was one of the worst "wins" (if you can call it that) we've ever had, and he would never be seen again after the inevitable round 2 pasting. Not gonna lie, seeing a character beloved by furries and perverts get destroyed... this does put a smile on my face. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 9:38:49 PM #26:	Division 2 Round 1: Liquid Snake, Luigi, Roxas, and Sho Minamimoto Liquid Snake - 46173 [33.1%] Luigi - 55362 [39.68%] Roxas - 26662 [19.11%] Sho - 11309 [8.11%] Total Votes - 139506 After a <i>wild</i> first round in the first division, it was nice to have a nice, boring, predictable 40-30-20-10 style of match that went exactly as everyone expected. Everyone picked Luigi to get first. Everyone picked Liquid to get second. People don't really care about the other two as characters and both are known for being in games that range from "okay" to absolute garbage. You will never get me to defend The World Ends With You. It's trash. There was a minor bit of worry over Luigi given how nuts the contest was to this point, but that was put to bed pretty quickly. He got first place easily, despite a small scare from Liquid overnight. The one takeaway from this match was Liquid doing rather well for himself, because his contest history to this point was merely "okay". It was nothing special, despite starring in two of the best matches we've ever had: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1730-20xx-division-round-1-frog-vs-liquid-snake https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2882-division-5-round-1-alucard-liquid-ness-zidane The issue there is they were round 1 fun, not matches with any actual consequences, so it's not like Liquid was thought of as being worth much. So his performance here was a surprise, though it wasn't expected to mean much until people actually looked at the bracket. If everything went to plan, the next round was going to be Liquid, Bowser, Luigi, and Phoenix Wright. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Uw97lOOlk That match could potentially allow Liquid to take advantage of LFF all over the place. From there, could Liquid Snake of all people catch a bandwagon run? Nah. But it was fun to think about at the time! --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947896102] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 2 Round 1: Liquid Snake, Luigi, Roxas, and Sho Minamimoto Liquid Snake - 46173 [33.1%] Luigi - 55362 [39.68%] Roxas - 26662 [19.11%] Sho - 11309 [8.11%] Total Votes - 139506 After a <i>wild</i> first round in the first division, it was nice to have a nice, boring, predictable 40-30-20-10 style of match that went exactly as everyone expected. Everyone picked Luigi to get first. Everyone picked Liquid to get second. People don't really care about the other two as characters and both are known for being in games that range from "okay" to absolute garbage. You will never get me to defend The World Ends With You. It's trash. There was a minor bit of worry over Luigi given how nuts the contest was to this point, but that was put to bed pretty quickly. He got first place easily, despite a small scare from Liquid overnight. The one takeaway from this match was Liquid doing rather well for himself, because his contest history to this point was merely "okay". It was nothing special, despite starring in two of the best matches we've ever had: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1730-20xx-division-round-1-frog-vs-liquid-snake https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2882-division-5-round-1-alucard-liquid-ness-zidane The issue there is they were round 1 fun, not matches with any actual consequences, so it's not like Liquid was thought of as being worth much. So his performance here was a surprise, though it wasn't expected to mean much until people actually looked at the bracket. If everything went to plan, the next round was going to be Liquid, Bowser, Luigi, and Phoenix Wright. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Uw97lOOlk That match could potentially allow Liquid to take advantage of LFF all over the place. From there, could Liquid Snake of all people catch a bandwagon run? Nah. But it was fun to think about at the time! </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 10:02:38 PM #27:	Division 2 Round 1: Bowser, Deckard Cain, Geno, and Phoenix Wright Bowser - 58067 [45.11%] Cain - 18611 [14.46%] Geno - 21271 [16.52%] Phoenix Wright - 30776 [23.91%] Total Votes - 128725 Stay awhile, and listen. When you're a heavy favorite and you're up against trash, your job is to go out there and take care of business. Bowser did just that, and in about 5 seconds he and Phoenix Wright teamed up for their predictable 1-2 finish to settle things down for the day. I guess if you wanted to go full throttle for the EPIC DUEL we were seeing the third place here you could, but why bother? There are more important things to worry about. Seeing Phoenix Wright advance in any contest is always fun with him being the Board 8 mascot, but the main thing to watch here was whether or not Bowser had a shot against Luigi next round. That was a meaningful match, because with those two splitting all the Nintendo votes, there was a very real threat Liquid would scoot by them both, resulting in only one advancing. If you take the 2007 stats seriously, Luigi was a 55-45 favorite. Based on round 1 in this contest.... who really knows? They both did about what we expected, though one could maybe argue Luigi disappointed a bit. Only actually seeing the match in round 2 would give us any answers. On a personal note, Deckard Cain and Geno are characters I just love, from games I love even more. It's rare to get a 4way poll where you adore everyone involved, so it was nice to see. I'm still holding out hope against hope Geno will be playable in Smash one day. No one ever actually said spirits deconfirm someone! And screw everyone involved in the writing of Cain's character in Diablo 3. "Stay awhile and listen was annoying" my ass. Piss off, Jay Wilson. You ruined the Diablo franchise, and your company is the worst in the history of video games. It's so nice that people are finally seeing what I've always known about Activision-Blizzard. They are <i>trash.</i> Oh, sorry, we're time traveling to the future in 2020 again. Back to 2008! :) --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947896838] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 2 Round 1: Bowser, Deckard Cain, Geno, and Phoenix Wright Bowser - 58067 [45.11%] Cain - 18611 [14.46%] Geno - 21271 [16.52%] Phoenix Wright - 30776 [23.91%] Total Votes - 128725 Stay awhile, and listen. When you're a heavy favorite and you're up against trash, your job is to go out there and take care of business. Bowser did just that, and in about 5 seconds he and Phoenix Wright teamed up for their predictable 1-2 finish to settle things down for the day. I guess if you wanted to go full throttle for the EPIC DUEL we were seeing the third place here you could, but why bother? There are more important things to worry about. Seeing Phoenix Wright advance in any contest is always fun with him being the Board 8 mascot, but the main thing to watch here was whether or not Bowser had a shot against Luigi next round. That was a meaningful match, because with those two splitting all the Nintendo votes, there was a very real threat Liquid would scoot by them both, resulting in only one advancing. If you take the 2007 stats seriously, Luigi was a 55-45 favorite. Based on round 1 in this contest.... who really knows? They both did about what we expected, though one could maybe argue Luigi disappointed a bit. Only actually seeing the match in round 2 would give us any answers. On a personal note, Deckard Cain and Geno are characters I just love, from games I love even more. It's rare to get a 4way poll where you adore everyone involved, so it was nice to see. I'm still holding out hope against hope Geno will be playable in Smash one day. No one ever actually said spirits deconfirm someone! And screw everyone involved in the writing of Cain's character in Diablo 3. "Stay awhile and listen was annoying" my ass. Piss off, Jay Wilson. You ruined the Diablo franchise, and your company is the worst in the history of video games. It's so nice that people are finally seeing what I've always known about Activision-Blizzard. They are <i>trash.</i> Oh, sorry, we're time traveling to the future in 2020 again. Back to 2008! :) </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 10:29:51 PM #28:	Division 2 Round 1: Fei, Knuckles, Mario, and Zelda Fei - 18695 [14.05%] Knuckles - 27794 [20.9%] Mario - 53836 [40.47%] Zelda - 32691 [24.58%] Total Votes - 133016 I know I promised not to time travel too much when doing the 2008 wayback machine stuff, but I can't help it with this one. Look at this poll result from 2008, then look at this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7379-finals-bracket-semifinal-zelda-vs-mario Too good. Anyway, the debate for this match was very simple. Mario was going to win the poll. Everyone knew this already. Everyone also already knew that Zelda was a stronger character than Knuckles. The fun part was whether or not Mario could hold Zelda back hard enough for Knuckles to squeeze into second place. It seems preposterous to think about by 2020 standards, but back in 2008 a lot of people felt like Mario could SFF Zelda, even with the knowledge that the Zelda series is higher in the hierarchy. It wasn't unreasonable at the time, even though I was one of the ones who felt like Mario SFFing Zelda was impossible. You guys need to realize how <i>insane</i> Mario looked from 2005 through 2007, how nuts that Mario > Samus beating in 2005 was, and how utterly monstrous he looked before Sephiroth and Link showed up in 2007. Remember, this was before Breath of the Wild happened. Back in 2008, Zelda was little more than a Smash character and the wrong name for Link. If you thought Mario would SFF her, I get it. It wasn't dumb to pick Knuckles here at all. It didn't take long for this match to be decided, and it went the way of Mario > Zelda in a hurry. There was little to no real SFF or LFF or whatever else, and the end result was Knuckles suffering his one and only first round loss in the history of contests -- a record that stands to the time of this writing in 2020. He's only ever lost in round 1 one time, and it took the combined efforts of Mario and Zelda to do it. And he <i>still</i> only lost by just under 5000 votes. That's about as impressive as it gets for a third place finish. Looking forward, Mario and Zelda both performed well here, and this spot of the bracket needed strong characters to hold back an incredibly dangerous, hilarious challenge. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947897713] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 2 Round 1: Fei, Knuckles, Mario, and Zelda Fei - 18695 [14.05%] Knuckles - 27794 [20.9%] Mario - 53836 [40.47%] Zelda - 32691 [24.58%] Total Votes - 133016 I know I promised not to time travel too much when doing the 2008 wayback machine stuff, but I can't help it with this one. Look at this poll result from 2008, then look at this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7379-finals-bracket-semifinal-zelda-vs-mario Too good. Anyway, the debate for this match was very simple. Mario was going to win the poll. Everyone knew this already. Everyone also already knew that Zelda was a stronger character than Knuckles. The fun part was whether or not Mario could hold Zelda back hard enough for Knuckles to squeeze into second place. It seems preposterous to think about by 2020 standards, but back in 2008 a lot of people felt like Mario could SFF Zelda, even with the knowledge that the Zelda series is higher in the hierarchy. It wasn't unreasonable at the time, even though I was one of the ones who felt like Mario SFFing Zelda was impossible. You guys need to realize how <i>insane</i> Mario looked from 2005 through 2007, how nuts that Mario > Samus beating in 2005 was, and how utterly monstrous he looked before Sephiroth and Link showed up in 2007. Remember, this was before Breath of the Wild happened. Back in 2008, Zelda was little more than a Smash character and the wrong name for Link. If you thought Mario would SFF her, I get it. It wasn't dumb to pick Knuckles here at all. It didn't take long for this match to be decided, and it went the way of Mario > Zelda in a hurry. There was little to no real SFF or LFF or whatever else, and the end result was Knuckles suffering his one and only first round loss in the history of contests -- a record that stands to the time of this writing in 2020. He's only ever lost in round 1 one time, and it took the combined efforts of Mario and Zelda to do it. And he <i>still</i> only lost by just under 5000 votes. That's about as impressive as it gets for a third place finish. Looking forward, Mario and Zelda both performed well here, and this spot of the bracket needed strong characters to hold back an incredibly dangerous, hilarious challenge. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 11:18:03 PM #29:	Division 2 Round 1: Lloyd Irving, Mudkip, Tom Nook, and Mega Man X Lloyd Irving - 23137 [16.58%] Mudkip - 42219 [30.26%] Tom Nook - 12070 [8.65%] Mega Man X - 62085 [44.5%] Total Votes - 139511 Pre-contest, Mudkip was pegged by many as the next potential L-Block. He had <b>all</b> the makings of it, too. A well-known meme, total joke status, he comes from a mega-popular franchise, and perhaps most importantly, people were actually <i>rooting</i> for him to go off and smash this bracket in half. The issue there is round 2 would end up featuring Mudkip in a match against Mega Man X, Mario, and Zelda. There was zero chance of a contest run unless Mudkip had some hidden Draven in him right from the jump, and he... didn't. This is not to say he wasn't super impressive in his debut, but the bracket placement meant he wasn't able to get the bandwagon effect going. Beyond Mudkip himself, the first major factor was there; his first match featured two garbage cans. No one likes Tom Nook, and Fails of is one of the most historically inept-yet-always-nominated entities we've ever seen. The board consensus of Mega Man X > Mudkip was practically on lock. Unfortunately, you also need good bracket placement for a run like that, which simply didn't happen. More on that in round 2. The other big debut to launch in this match was Mega Man X, who is a character many thought could be just as strong as Mega Man himself (if not stronger), so it was important for X to get started on the right foot. And oh my goodness did he ever. This was a <i>beating,</i> and I'll just spoil you on the stats and let you know this is every bit the number Mega Man himself would have put up. It's an actual crime we've yet to see Mega Man vs X, because that match would be nuts, but it is what it is. We've yet to get a true Sonic vs Mario, either, though that match would be like 70-30 in Mario's favor these days. This all added up to very impressive performances by our two winners, and it became very obvious very quickly that had Mudkip drawn better, he could have won this contest. But even L-Block 2007 couldn't have gotten past Zelda, Mario, and X in round 2. There's just no way. Only Draven or maybe Undertale could have done that. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947899160] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 2 Round 1: Lloyd Irving, Mudkip, Tom Nook, and Mega Man X Lloyd Irving - 23137 [16.58%] Mudkip - 42219 [30.26%] Tom Nook - 12070 [8.65%] Mega Man X - 62085 [44.5%] Total Votes - 139511 Pre-contest, Mudkip was pegged by many as the next potential L-Block. He had <b>all</b> the makings of it, too. A well-known meme, total joke status, he comes from a mega-popular franchise, and perhaps most importantly, people were actually <i>rooting</i> for him to go off and smash this bracket in half. The issue there is round 2 would end up featuring Mudkip in a match against Mega Man X, Mario, and Zelda. There was zero chance of a contest run unless Mudkip had some hidden Draven in him right from the jump, and he... didn't. This is not to say he wasn't super impressive in his debut, but the bracket placement meant he wasn't able to get the bandwagon effect going. Beyond Mudkip himself, the first major factor was there; his first match featured two garbage cans. No one likes Tom Nook, and Fails of is one of the most historically inept-yet-always-nominated entities we've ever seen. The board consensus of Mega Man X > Mudkip was practically on lock. Unfortunately, you also need good bracket placement for a run like that, which simply didn't happen. More on that in round 2. The other big debut to launch in this match was Mega Man X, who is a character many thought could be just as strong as Mega Man himself (if not stronger), so it was important for X to get started on the right foot. And oh my goodness did he ever. This was a <i>beating,</i> and I'll just spoil you on the stats and let you know this is every bit the number Mega Man himself would have put up. It's an actual crime we've yet to see Mega Man vs X, because that match would be nuts, but it is what it is. We've yet to get a true Sonic vs Mario, either, though that match would be like 70-30 in Mario's favor these days. This all added up to very impressive performances by our two winners, and it became very obvious very quickly that had Mudkip drawn better, he could have won this contest. But even L-Block 2007 couldn't have gotten past Zelda, Mario, and X in round 2. There's just no way. Only Draven or maybe Undertale could have done that. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/03/20 11:34:55 PM #30:	Division 3 Round 1: Crash Bandicoot, Nightmare, Raz, and Samus Crash - 20841 [16.89%] Nightmare - 27999 [22.69%] Raz - 10162 [8.23%] Samus - 64408 [52.19%] Total Votes - 123410 If you put this match in a time machine and redid it, Crash might actually get second place. It took a looooooong time, but he and his series actually got relevant again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_Bandicoot Just look at the time line. See the huge white space on it where nothing happened? Gamers lost their minds when he starred in anything at all, let alone something really good. It was awesome to see! Meanwhile, Soul Calibur is.... Soul Calibur. People can try to sell me on 3D fighters all day long, but I'll always see Soul Calibur as "Tekken with huge weapons". They're good games and I see why they used to be a huge deal, don't get me wrong, but they're just not for me. They seem to have fallen off over the years, too. Thankfully this match happened in 2008, and it was one of the most predictable, boring matches of the entire first round. Everyone knew Samus was going to faceroll this match, and faceroll she did. Breaking 50% in a fourway poll is not easy to do, but Samus made it look simple. Beyond that, there was zero drama whatsoever. We all knew Nightmare would win an easy, yet distant second place en route to getting destroyed in round 2. For those playing the home game, this was his same exact path in 2007. By the way, when I was digging up stuff for this match, I noticed people saying Nightmare is the most popular character in the series. You guys do remember Link made an appearance, right? And even beyond the sardonic answer, I would be shocked if Talim or Taki wasn't #1. Not that we'll ever get to find out in a contest setting, but hey. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947899638] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 3 Round 1: Crash Bandicoot, Nightmare, Raz, and Samus Crash - 20841 [16.89%] Nightmare - 27999 [22.69%] Raz - 10162 [8.23%] Samus - 64408 [52.19%] Total Votes - 123410 If you put this match in a time machine and redid it, Crash might actually get second place. It took a looooooong time, but he and his series actually got relevant again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_Bandicoot Just look at the time line. See the huge white space on it where nothing happened? Gamers lost their minds when he starred in anything at all, let alone something really good. It was awesome to see! Meanwhile, Soul Calibur is.... Soul Calibur. People can try to sell me on 3D fighters all day long, but I'll always see Soul Calibur as "Tekken with huge weapons". They're good games and I see why they used to be a huge deal, don't get me wrong, but they're just not for me. They seem to have fallen off over the years, too. Thankfully this match happened in 2008, and it was one of the most predictable, boring matches of the entire first round. Everyone knew Samus was going to faceroll this match, and faceroll she did. Breaking 50% in a fourway poll is not easy to do, but Samus made it look simple. Beyond that, there was zero drama whatsoever. We all knew Nightmare would win an easy, yet distant second place en route to getting destroyed in round 2. For those playing the home game, this was his same exact path in 2007. By the way, when I was digging up stuff for this match, I noticed people saying Nightmare is the most popular character in the series. You guys do remember Link made an appearance, right? And even beyond the sardonic answer, I would be shocked if Talim or Taki wasn't #1. Not that we'll ever get to find out in a contest setting, but hey. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 12:00:47 AM #31:	Division 3 Round 1: Frog, Ganondorf, KOS-MOS, and Neku Sakuraba Frog - 31076 [24.24%] Ganondorf - 56235 [43.86%] KOS-MOS - 25010 [19.5%] Neku - 15903 [12.4%] Total Votes - 128224 [[File:TheStupidRaptor.gif]] The World Ends With You is dog shit garbage. Have I mentioned that yet? The game is absolute gutter trash. Neku getting his ass whipped in his debut is well deserved, as is his 0-4 record as of this writing. What a terrible character. Anyway, this match was nothing to write home about. We all knew Ganon was winning, and most people knew Frog was taking second place. There was some debate about KOS-MOS potentially pulling an upset based on Frog struggling with some low tier Kingdom Hearts characters in recent contests, but it didn't take some massive deep dive to see Frog as the favorite here. Other than Diablo and Arthas splitting votes in 2007, KOS-MOS came into this year with two contest wins. One was against Crash Bandicoot all the way back in 2003, and the other was against something named Amy Rose. Meanwhile, Frog was coming in with wins over Liquid Snake, Master Chief, Riku, Axel, and he had that incredible close loss to Solid Snake in 2004. I know the stats say it was supposed to be close, but KOS-MOS just didn't have the resume Frog had regardless of recent struggles. When the match started, there was no picture. So the one advantage KOS-MOS actually had wasn't even there, which gave Frog even more of an advantage in the actual match. Nice job running your first contest there, Allen. There was eventually a picture for the match, but what little suspense may have existed was long gone by then. Frog built up a lead that KOS-MOS was never going to catch, and that was that. There wasn't even the typical Chrono Trigger day vote collapse that we'd come to expect, either, largely because trends will dissipate against weak competition. KOS-MOS didn't exactly have the strength to take advantage of Frog's weaknesses, like, say, a Sonic or Kingdom Hearts character would have. All in all, it added up to another predictable result in a long run of predictable round 1 results. Division 1 was nutty, but as you all can see, things settled down after that as we started getting rid of all the trash. Like Neku Sakuraba. Who starred in a game that was terrible. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947900336] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 3 Round 1: Frog, Ganondorf, KOS-MOS, and Neku Sakuraba Frog - 31076 [24.24%] Ganondorf - 56235 [43.86%] KOS-MOS - 25010 [19.5%] Neku - 15903 [12.4%] Total Votes - 128224 [[File:TheStupidRaptor.gif]] The World Ends With You is dog shit garbage. Have I mentioned that yet? The game is absolute gutter trash. Neku getting his ass whipped in his debut is well deserved, as is his 0-4 record as of this writing. What a terrible character. Anyway, this match was nothing to write home about. We all knew Ganon was winning, and most people knew Frog was taking second place. There was some debate about KOS-MOS potentially pulling an upset based on Frog struggling with some low tier Kingdom Hearts characters in recent contests, but it didn't take some massive deep dive to see Frog as the favorite here. Other than Diablo and Arthas splitting votes in 2007, KOS-MOS came into this year with two contest wins. One was against Crash Bandicoot all the way back in 2003, and the other was against something named Amy Rose. Meanwhile, Frog was coming in with wins over Liquid Snake, Master Chief, Riku, Axel, and he had that incredible close loss to Solid Snake in 2004. I know the stats say it was supposed to be close, but KOS-MOS just didn't have the resume Frog had regardless of recent struggles. When the match started, there was no picture. So the one advantage KOS-MOS actually had wasn't even there, which gave Frog even more of an advantage in the actual match. Nice job running your first contest there, Allen. There was eventually a picture for the match, but what little suspense may have existed was long gone by then. Frog built up a lead that KOS-MOS was never going to catch, and that was that. There wasn't even the typical Chrono Trigger day vote collapse that we'd come to expect, either, largely because trends will dissipate against weak competition. KOS-MOS didn't exactly have the strength to take advantage of Frog's weaknesses, like, say, a Sonic or Kingdom Hearts character would have. All in all, it added up to another predictable result in a long run of predictable round 1 results. Division 1 was nutty, but as you all can see, things settled down after that as we started getting rid of all the trash. Like Neku Sakuraba. Who starred in a game that was terrible. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 12:18:48 AM #32:	Division 3 Round 1: Falco, GLaDOS, Vincent, and Wander Falco - 37158 [26.82%] GLaDOS - 27708 [20%] Vincent - 63262 [45.67%] Wander - 10405 [7.51%] Total Votes - 138533 One day after seeing Neku get destroyed, I got to watch another garbage can get squished. Good stuff. Wander and his game are both <i>terrible.</i> Beyond that, this was yet another in a pretty long line of super predictable matches. Everyone knew Vincent would cruise to first place in this one, because he had beaten Crono in 2007. I'll spare people the rundown of moronic arguments everyone had about the Noble Nine when that happened, because everyone involved was acting like children over something completely meaningless. Vincent's job this contest was to kick names, take ass, and get ready for the potential Crono rematch down the line that we all wanted. Could he have performed better here? Maybe, but I've been doing this so long that I don't fret over some percentage fluctuations in early rounds anymore. I don't care. Whether Vincent scored 45% or 48% or 50% or whatever does not matter to me. The second place choice was also very predictable, though when I checked the wayback machine, I was surprised to see some people thinking GLaDOS could beat Falco here. Maaaaaaaaybe if you did this match during the apex of Portal fandom and Brawl didn't exist, sure, but in a BrawlFEAR world? No chance. Falco was always going to get an easy second place here. Brawl was that relevant to people's predictions back then. This actually helped set up a really fun round 2 match, which we'll get to when the time comes. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947900812] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 3 Round 1: Falco, GLaDOS, Vincent, and Wander Falco - 37158 [26.82%] GLaDOS - 27708 [20%] Vincent - 63262 [45.67%] Wander - 10405 [7.51%] Total Votes - 138533 One day after seeing Neku get destroyed, I got to watch another garbage can get squished. Good stuff. Wander and his game are both <i>terrible.</i> Beyond that, this was yet another in a pretty long line of super predictable matches. Everyone knew Vincent would cruise to first place in this one, because he had beaten Crono in 2007. I'll spare people the rundown of moronic arguments everyone had about the Noble Nine when that happened, because everyone involved was acting like children over something completely meaningless. Vincent's job this contest was to kick names, take ass, and get ready for the potential Crono rematch down the line that we all wanted. Could he have performed better here? Maybe, but I've been doing this so long that I don't fret over some percentage fluctuations in early rounds anymore. I don't care. Whether Vincent scored 45% or 48% or 50% or whatever does not matter to me. The second place choice was also very predictable, though when I checked the wayback machine, I was surprised to see some people thinking GLaDOS could beat Falco here. Maaaaaaaaybe if you did this match during the apex of Portal fandom and Brawl didn't exist, sure, but in a BrawlFEAR world? No chance. Falco was always going to get an easy second place here. Brawl was that relevant to people's predictions back then. This actually helped set up a really fun round 2 match, which we'll get to when the time comes. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Hbthebattle 12/04/20 12:22:54 AM #33:	PostContestUlti posted... Brawl was that relevant to people's predictions back then. Has that really changed? Ultimate is quite relevant to people's predictions today --- Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD Guru! <cite>Hbthebattle posted [p:947900891] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>PostContestUlti posted... </cite> <quote>Brawl was that relevant to people's predictions back then. </quote>Has that really changed? Ultimate is quite relevant to people's predictions today </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 12:23:25 AM #34:	Okay this is a good stopping point. I need sleep and I actually remember the sheer meltdown the next match caused. It needs some proper love. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947900902] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Okay this is a good stopping point. I need sleep and I actually remember the sheer meltdown the next match caused. It needs some proper love. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 12:24:19 AM #35:	Hbthebattle posted... Has that really changed? Ultimate is quite relevant to people's predictions today We are pretending time machines don't exist here sir. But yes, Smash is a beast, and it's going to get even nuttier now that people have seen what happened with Shepard and Leon Kennedy last contest. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947900928] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Hbthebattle posted... </cite> <quote>Has that really changed? Ultimate is quite relevant to people's predictions today</quote>We are pretending time machines don't exist here sir. But yes, Smash is a beast, and it's going to get even nuttier now that people have seen what happened with Shepard and Leon Kennedy last contest. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
_SecretSquirrel 12/04/20 3:36:27 AM #36:	GLaDOS would definitely kill Falco today, but as a match picture guy, we can't forget how bad GLaDOS looked before Portal 2 came around. And when I say "how bad GLaDOS looked," I mean it in the literal sense. http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb7/cb7-11.jpg You don't physically see GLaDOS until the very end of the game, and when you do make it to the fight, you end up fighting a faceless monstrosity that didn't really inspire much art, much less official art. It wasn't until Portal 2 came around that GLaDOS got a traditional design with something resembling a face. I don't care how much you believe in pic factor, it will hurt a character if you are that unrecognizable as Portal 1 GLaDOS. --- Agent Triple Zero at your service! This line reserved for the true greatone, azuarc, winner of Game of the Decade! <cite>_SecretSquirrel posted [p:947904482] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>GLaDOS would definitely kill Falco today, but as a match picture guy, we can't forget how bad GLaDOS looked before Portal 2 came around. And when I say "how bad GLaDOS looked," I mean it in the literal sense. http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb7/cb7-11.jpg You don't physically see GLaDOS until the very end of the game, and when you do make it to the fight, you end up fighting a faceless monstrosity that didn't really inspire much art, much less official art. It wasn't until Portal 2 came around that GLaDOS got a traditional design with something resembling a face. I don't care how much you believe in pic factor, it will hurt a character if you are that unrecognizable as Portal 1 GLaDOS. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/04/20 5:11:52 AM #37:	Technically Mudkip was in 2007, but all he did was crush some Nintendo fodder in R1 and give Luigi a very slight scare in R2. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947905597] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Technically Mudkip was in 2007, but all he did was crush some Nintendo fodder in R1 and give Luigi a very slight scare in R2. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 6:21:08 PM #38:	Division 3 Round 1: Balthier, Big Daddy, Gordon Freeman, and Scorpion Balthier - 29975 [22.45%] Big Daddy - 25325 [18.97%] Gordon Freeman - 38017 [28.47%] Scorpion - 40197 [30.11%] Total Votes - 133514 If you hop in the wayback machine and only look at the guru picks and such, you'd think this was some predictable match that we could all just talk about for 30 seconds and move on. And on the surface, that's true. Balthier totally crapped the bed in 2007 when everyone expected him to get first place over <i>Ada Wong</i> of all people -- just a total choke job -- and people also knew that Big Daddy would be weak. GameFAQs, by and large, does not care about FPS characters. Of course I say that with Gordon Freeman of Gordon Freeman Never Wins lore in the same match. Gordon, year after year, managed to keep choking away winnable matches. This dude lost to Tina Armstrong, who most people can't remember without Googling. This dude lost to Max Payne. This dude lost to Sam Fisher. Leon Kennedy was a predictable loss, but still. It took Phoenix Wright for Gordon to finally get off the schneid, and miraculously, Board 8 didn't hate the guy despite getting his first win on our mascot. He then repeated his winning ways in 2007, in a very debatable 4way match against Ike and Duke Nukem. He actually managed to not choke that year! But then The Orange Box happened in October of 2007, and it gave everything involved a boost. We saw a little bit of a hint of this with GLaDOS doing okay in round one of this contest, but it was Gordon himself who really proved that it mattered. I also maintain that if 2008 was a 1v1 games contest and Portal had a good draw, Portal would have gotten a bandwagon and won the entire thing outright. We've seen new games catch fire and so off in these things over the years. To the point. Everyone picked Scorpion > Gordon Freeman > the field in this match. We have the template from 2007; Sub-Zero > Gordon. But that was pre-Orange Box. Memes + good games = "uh oh" in the early parts of a contest poll, when the board vote rules. Gordon caught a bunch of early votes, and had an early lead in the match. Balthier and that thing from Bioshock stunk up the place, as expected, and we all figured Scorpion would handle his business once the board vote died down. And he did. The first place spot was tied 15 minutes in, and we all figured Scorpion would cruise to this contest having yet another predictable result. <b>"NOT SO FAST, my friend!"</b> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJSVT8meQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVAc3q-7qPQ I'm just saying this while looking at creativename's updater 12 years later. I remember this one very well. When Gordon Freeman won the next update to go by 100 votes, <i>all hell broke loose</i> on Board 8. You wouldn't know it to look at our board or our vote totals now, but people used to live and die by every 15 minute update in crazy matches. This one, despite being a round 1 fun match, had people going <i>wild.</i> GORDON FREEMAN was doing this? The same dude that lost to Tina Armstrong? THAT guy?! Yeah, that guy. Orange Box love was real, and it's not like Mortal Kombat was sitting here doing much of anything. Those few updates where it looked like Gordon was going to shock the world were a total madhouse, and while I hate to rely on "you had to be there" analysis, it's the truth. For those of us who love these things, Gordon Freeman Never Wins felt like family. To see him go from that to <i>this</i> was amazing. It didn't stop there, either. This dude actually held his lead overnight. He didn't <i>build</i> a lead or anything, but he held strong at 100-150 all night long. If he managed to catch the morning vote, he was legitimately going to pull off an impossible feat and actually get first place in this match. You know the rest. Scorpion caught the morning vote, and that was that. It took a little while in the am hours before Scorpion fully controlled things, but fully control things he did. A fun match turned into Scorpion winning by 2200 votes fairly quickly, but no one talks about that part when they bring this match up. They talk about people losing their absolute shit for 7 hours. Conventional wisdom held that this would be Gordon's one and only moment this contest, as Vincent > Scorpion in round 2 looked like the most predictable result ever. Yeah if you thought people lost their minds in this match, just wait. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947926647] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 3 Round 1: Balthier, Big Daddy, Gordon Freeman, and Scorpion Balthier - 29975 [22.45%] Big Daddy - 25325 [18.97%] Gordon Freeman - 38017 [28.47%] Scorpion - 40197 [30.11%] Total Votes - 133514 If you hop in the wayback machine and only look at the guru picks and such, you'd think this was some predictable match that we could all just talk about for 30 seconds and move on. And on the surface, that's true. Balthier totally crapped the bed in 2007 when everyone expected him to get first place over <i>Ada Wong</i> of all people -- just a total choke job -- and people also knew that Big Daddy would be weak. GameFAQs, by and large, does not care about FPS characters. Of course I say that with Gordon Freeman of Gordon Freeman Never Wins lore in the same match. Gordon, year after year, managed to keep choking away winnable matches. This dude lost to Tina Armstrong, who most people can't remember without Googling. This dude lost to Max Payne. This dude lost to Sam Fisher. Leon Kennedy was a predictable loss, but still. It took Phoenix Wright for Gordon to finally get off the schneid, and miraculously, Board 8 didn't hate the guy despite getting his first win on our mascot. He then repeated his winning ways in 2007, in a very debatable 4way match against Ike and Duke Nukem. He actually managed to not choke that year! But then The Orange Box happened in October of 2007, and it gave everything involved a boost. We saw a little bit of a hint of this with GLaDOS doing okay in round one of this contest, but it was Gordon himself who really proved that it mattered. I also maintain that if 2008 was a 1v1 games contest and Portal had a good draw, Portal would have gotten a bandwagon and won the entire thing outright. We've seen new games catch fire and so off in these things over the years. To the point. Everyone picked Scorpion > Gordon Freeman > the field in this match. We have the template from 2007; Sub-Zero > Gordon. But that was pre-Orange Box. Memes + good games = "uh oh" in the early parts of a contest poll, when the board vote rules. Gordon caught a bunch of early votes, and had an early lead in the match. Balthier and that thing from Bioshock stunk up the place, as expected, and we all figured Scorpion would handle his business once the board vote died down. And he did. The first place spot was tied 15 minutes in, and we all figured Scorpion would cruise to this contest having yet another predictable result. <b>"NOT SO FAST, my friend!"</b> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJSVT8meQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVAc3q-7qPQ I'm just saying this while looking at creativename's updater 12 years later. I remember this one very well. When Gordon Freeman won the next update to go by 100 votes, <i>all hell broke loose</i> on Board 8. You wouldn't know it to look at our board or our vote totals now, but people used to live and die by every 15 minute update in crazy matches. This one, despite being a round 1 fun match, had people going <i>wild.</i> GORDON FREEMAN was doing this? The same dude that lost to Tina Armstrong? THAT guy?! Yeah, that guy. Orange Box love was real, and it's not like Mortal Kombat was sitting here doing much of anything. Those few updates where it looked like Gordon was going to shock the world were a total madhouse, and while I hate to rely on "you had to be there" analysis, it's the truth. For those of us who love these things, Gordon Freeman Never Wins felt like family. To see him go from that to <i>this</i> was amazing. It didn't stop there, either. This dude actually held his lead overnight. He didn't <i>build</i> a lead or anything, but he held strong at 100-150 all night long. If he managed to catch the morning vote, he was legitimately going to pull off an impossible feat and actually get first place in this match. You know the rest. Scorpion caught the morning vote, and that was that. It took a little while in the am hours before Scorpion fully controlled things, but fully control things he did. A fun match turned into Scorpion winning by 2200 votes fairly quickly, but no one talks about that part when they bring this match up. They talk about people losing their absolute shit for 7 hours. Conventional wisdom held that this would be Gordon's one and only moment this contest, as Vincent > Scorpion in round 2 looked like the most predictable result ever. Yeah if you thought people lost their minds in this match, just wait. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/04/20 6:35:55 PM #39:	Division 4 Round 1: Amaterasu, Crono, Frank West, and Kaim Argonar Amaterasu - 32815 [26.56%] Crono - 60803 [49.22%] Frank West - 19972 [16.17%] Kaim - 9940 [8.05%] Total Votes - 123530 Another round 1 match, another predictable result. The Noble Nine came into this contest ready to take care of business and avenge the joke run of last year (even with 2008 being the most brazen root-for-the-joke contest we've ever had), and take care of business they did. When almost 100% of gurus predict a fourway and it goes to plan, you can just go to sleep that day. Casuals thought Amaterasu might lose for whatever reason, but ever contest you get a bunch of matches where the board embarrasses the casuals. This was one of those matches, though every year all you hear about are the times when casuals get one over on us. It happens. If you look at Amaterasu's contest history, even to the time I'm actually writing this (2020), she has never lost in round one. This is pretty impressive given she's the definition of middle of the road. Lastly, speaking of Kaim, I actually have The Lost Odyssey sitting around somewhere. I should really get around to playing it one of these days. Is it any good? --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947927136] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 4 Round 1: Amaterasu, Crono, Frank West, and Kaim Argonar Amaterasu - 32815 [26.56%] Crono - 60803 [49.22%] Frank West - 19972 [16.17%] Kaim - 9940 [8.05%] Total Votes - 123530 Another round 1 match, another predictable result. The Noble Nine came into this contest ready to take care of business and avenge the joke run of last year (even with 2008 being the most brazen root-for-the-joke contest we've ever had), and take care of business they did. When almost 100% of gurus predict a fourway and it goes to plan, you can just go to sleep that day. Casuals thought Amaterasu might lose for whatever reason, but ever contest you get a bunch of matches where the board embarrasses the casuals. This was one of those matches, though every year all you hear about are the times when casuals get one over on us. It happens. If you look at Amaterasu's contest history, even to the time I'm actually writing this (2020), she has never lost in round one. This is pretty impressive given she's the definition of middle of the road. Lastly, speaking of Kaim, I actually have The Lost Odyssey sitting around somewhere. I should really get around to playing it one of these days. Is it any good? </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 12:06:15 AM #40:	Division 4 Round 1: L-Block, Meta Knight, Ryu, and the Duck Hunt Dog L-Block - 44325 [31.81%] Meta Knight - 31510 [22.61%] Ryu - 43990 [31.57%] The Dog - 19519 [14.01%] Total Votes - 139344 If you look in the wayback machine, you'll think most people wanted L-Block to come out in 2008 and get destroyed. This is simply not the case. It was a mixed reception, with a lot of people fully on the joke train that year. A lot of people were rooting against the repeat, but a lot of others either wouldn't have minded a repeat or were only rooting against the block because they wanted something else -- the Duck Hunt dog, the Weighted Companion Cube, the Sandbag from Smash Bros, CATS, Hogger, your sister's ass, the pony express, et al -- to take the bandwagon title. This was a <i>heavily</i> debated match pre-contest, with almost all of the arguing revolving around the defending champ. It was early in joke trend world, but Board 8 was wise to it early. We all knew that L-Block would fall off a bit (though nothing like what we'd see in the future with Draven), plus this poll also featured another joke all-star with the Duck Hunt dog. So L-Block had two huge things working against it; the novelty wearing off, and a basset hound potentially syphoning off a bunch of votes right in the first match. Jokes winning require the bandwagon effect, and for those rooting against L-Block, the potential existed for him to lose early in this contest. The issue, of course, was whether or not Ryu and Meta Knight were tough enough to pull it off. As someone who both picked against L-Block and would have loved to see him win the contest again, I can explain the logic here well enough. I thought L-Block would have the typical joke trend fallout the following year, and didn't think there was a chance he'd come back with any strength. Ryu has a very consistent contest guy over the years, which is why we all picked him to get first place. The wild card was Meta Knight. Kirby games have never been strong on here, but they also aren't why Kirby himself has contest strength. You can thank character design and Smash Bros for that, which thanks to BrawlFEAR Meta Knight had in spades. He actually made the contest in 2007 pre-Brawl, and though he finished a <i>distant</i> second, he did advance into round 2. With Brawl at his back, with L-Block anti-bandwagon at his back, with the Nova Scotia bloodhound dalmation beagle basset duck tolling short haired pointer retriever stealing joke votes, I truly thought we would see Ryu > Meta Knight > L-Block (close third place) > goodest boy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w Yeah we screwed that one up pretty bad, folks. In fairness, most people thought this was going to be Ryu > L-Block, but even those folks dropped the ball. That's because L-Block, at least early on in this contest, showed no signs whatsoever of slowing down from its 2007 pace. When this poll started, Ryu and L-Block not only left Meta Knight and the dog in the dust, but L-Block showed off its joke trends all over again. It <i>dominated</i> the early voting of this poll even in the face of an anti-bandwagon, and this led to a lot of chicken little junk all over Board 8. There's nothing we can do, L-Block is going to steamroll all over again, and blah blah blah. You guys know I love my rallies and joke trends, so I was loving every second of the early going. Seeing L-Block going nuts for the second year in a row... that. That puts a smile on my face. It sucked seeing Meta Knight and one good boy getting sacrificed for it, but it was a small price to pay for salvation. It looked early on as if we would get a simple L-Block > Ryu result, but then joke trends took over and L-Block started falling off. We ended up having a very good fight for first place here that would have been the stuff of legends were it an actual 1v1 match in a legitimately formatted contest. Can you imagine if L-Block was defending its title in a 1v1 match and Ryu gave it the duel we saw here? This is why I don't like 4way formats. We had this epic fight for first, and it meant dick. L-Block and Ryu would both advance anyway, so outside of point order and bragging rights, the actual result meant nothing. It's why it took me 12 years to bother writing this, because when epic fights for second place mean more than epic fights for first, your format sucks. That said, this was a hell of a match to watch, and the explosion on the forums was amazing. There was <i>so much whining</i> about L-Block, and it was great. As for the match, Ryu chopped off a 550 vote lead overnight, and then did his best impersonation of rubberband AI for 16 hours. You know how when you're playing Mario Kart or Madden and the AI gets more difficult as you get more ahead of it? That was Ryu in this match. The more L-Block pulled ahead, the tougher Ryu got. But then he would catch up, and just.... die. Then L-Block would pull ahead and it would start all over again. He came back from a 550 vote deficit overnight, died, and fell behind by 620. Then the ASV hit, Ryu won it, he came back, died again, and fell behind by 450. Ryu started coming back <i>again</i> when the second night vote hit, but then the poll ended. If this format wasn't garbage, we'd be talking about a great duel, L-Block outlasting Ryu, and what L-Block's odds were against Crono in round 2. As-is, L-Block and Ryu basically touched gloves at match's end with a gentlemen's agreement to see each other again soon. I hate it. Shadow vs Zidane and Isaac vs Lucario for distant second place should not mean more than the match we just watched. It just shouldn't, and I feel like Allen realized this after the 2009 games contest. It's just not the same as the finality of one and done. But more on that when we conclude all this up. Meta Knight basically crapped the bed here, though one wonders if the dog being here actually hurt Meta Knight as much as it did L-Block, the latter of which got first place even <i>with</i> some factors working against him. Focus quickly turned to round 2, where we would see Crono, Amaterasu, L-Block, and Ryu all in a poll together. For those rooting against the block to repeat, they soon realized that L-Block beat Ryu with a bunch of albatrosses hanging on him. In round 2, there would be nothing to slow him down, and it led to more arguing on the board about whether or not L-Block style contestants were good for contests. People were extrapolating this huge path forward and assuming L-Block would win again, and people were also going nuts extrapolating these crazy paths for characters not yet seen in polls. And Pikachu was just sitting there this whole time like https://static.magiquiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Surprised-Pikachu.png --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947936890] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 4 Round 1: L-Block, Meta Knight, Ryu, and the Duck Hunt Dog L-Block - 44325 [31.81%] Meta Knight - 31510 [22.61%] Ryu - 43990 [31.57%] The Dog - 19519 [14.01%] Total Votes - 139344 If you look in the wayback machine, you'll think most people wanted L-Block to come out in 2008 and get destroyed. This is simply not the case. It was a mixed reception, with a lot of people fully on the joke train that year. A lot of people were rooting against the repeat, but a lot of others either wouldn't have minded a repeat or were only rooting against the block because they wanted something else -- the Duck Hunt dog, the Weighted Companion Cube, the Sandbag from Smash Bros, CATS, Hogger, your sister's ass, the pony express, et al -- to take the bandwagon title. This was a <i>heavily</i> debated match pre-contest, with almost all of the arguing revolving around the defending champ. It was early in joke trend world, but Board 8 was wise to it early. We all knew that L-Block would fall off a bit (though nothing like what we'd see in the future with Draven), plus this poll also featured another joke all-star with the Duck Hunt dog. So L-Block had two huge things working against it; the novelty wearing off, and a basset hound potentially syphoning off a bunch of votes right in the first match. Jokes winning require the bandwagon effect, and for those rooting against L-Block, the potential existed for him to lose early in this contest. The issue, of course, was whether or not Ryu and Meta Knight were tough enough to pull it off. As someone who both picked against L-Block and would have loved to see him win the contest again, I can explain the logic here well enough. I thought L-Block would have the typical joke trend fallout the following year, and didn't think there was a chance he'd come back with any strength. Ryu has a very consistent contest guy over the years, which is why we all picked him to get first place. The wild card was Meta Knight. Kirby games have never been strong on here, but they also aren't why Kirby himself has contest strength. You can thank character design and Smash Bros for that, which thanks to BrawlFEAR Meta Knight had in spades. He actually made the contest in 2007 pre-Brawl, and though he finished a <i>distant</i> second, he did advance into round 2. With Brawl at his back, with L-Block anti-bandwagon at his back, with the Nova Scotia bloodhound dalmation beagle basset duck tolling short haired pointer retriever stealing joke votes, I truly thought we would see Ryu > Meta Knight > L-Block (close third place) > goodest boy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w Yeah we screwed that one up pretty bad, folks. In fairness, most people thought this was going to be Ryu > L-Block, but even those folks dropped the ball. That's because L-Block, at least early on in this contest, showed no signs whatsoever of slowing down from its 2007 pace. When this poll started, Ryu and L-Block not only left Meta Knight and the dog in the dust, but L-Block showed off its joke trends all over again. It <i>dominated</i> the early voting of this poll even in the face of an anti-bandwagon, and this led to a lot of chicken little junk all over Board 8. There's nothing we can do, L-Block is going to steamroll all over again, and blah blah blah. You guys know I love my rallies and joke trends, so I was loving every second of the early going. Seeing L-Block going nuts for the second year in a row... that. That puts a smile on my face. It sucked seeing Meta Knight and one good boy getting sacrificed for it, but it was a small price to pay for salvation. It looked early on as if we would get a simple L-Block > Ryu result, but then joke trends took over and L-Block started falling off. We ended up having a very good fight for first place here that would have been the stuff of legends were it an actual 1v1 match in a legitimately formatted contest. Can you imagine if L-Block was defending its title in a 1v1 match and Ryu gave it the duel we saw here? This is why I don't like 4way formats. We had this epic fight for first, and it meant dick. L-Block and Ryu would both advance anyway, so outside of point order and bragging rights, the actual result meant nothing. It's why it took me 12 years to bother writing this, because when epic fights for second place mean more than epic fights for first, your format sucks. That said, this was a hell of a match to watch, and the explosion on the forums was amazing. There was <i>so much whining</i> about L-Block, and it was great. As for the match, Ryu chopped off a 550 vote lead overnight, and then did his best impersonation of rubberband AI for 16 hours. You know how when you're playing Mario Kart or Madden and the AI gets more difficult as you get more ahead of it? That was Ryu in this match. The more L-Block pulled ahead, the tougher Ryu got. But then he would catch up, and just.... die. Then L-Block would pull ahead and it would start all over again. He came back from a 550 vote deficit overnight, died, and fell behind by 620. Then the ASV hit, Ryu won it, he came back, died again, and fell behind by 450. Ryu started coming back <i>again</i> when the second night vote hit, but then the poll ended. If this format wasn't garbage, we'd be talking about a great duel, L-Block outlasting Ryu, and what L-Block's odds were against Crono in round 2. As-is, L-Block and Ryu basically touched gloves at match's end with a gentlemen's agreement to see each other again soon. I hate it. Shadow vs Zidane and Isaac vs Lucario for distant second place should not mean more than the match we just watched. It just shouldn't, and I feel like Allen realized this after the 2009 games contest. It's just not the same as the finality of one and done. But more on that when we conclude all this up. Meta Knight basically crapped the bed here, though one wonders if the dog being here actually hurt Meta Knight as much as it did L-Block, the latter of which got first place even <i>with</i> some factors working against him. Focus quickly turned to round 2, where we would see Crono, Amaterasu, L-Block, and Ryu all in a poll together. For those rooting against the block to repeat, they soon realized that L-Block beat Ryu with a bunch of albatrosses hanging on him. In round 2, there would be nothing to slow him down, and it led to more arguing on the board about whether or not L-Block style contestants were good for contests. People were extrapolating this huge path forward and assuming L-Block would win again, and people were also going nuts extrapolating these crazy paths for characters not yet seen in polls. And Pikachu was just sitting there this whole time like https://static.magiquiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Surprised-Pikachu.png </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 12:47:46 AM #41:	Division 4 Round 1: Alucard, Captain Falcon, Diddy Kong, and Kratos Aurion Alucard - 43108 [35.54%] Captain Falcon - 34435 [28.39%] Diddy Kong - 22950 [18.92%] Kratos Aurion - 20787 [17.14%] Total Votes - 121280 After a long run of predictable necessities, we were given our second surprise match in a row. This didn't have the aura of an L-Block match, but it was a surprise nonetheless. Alucard, Falcon, and Kratos were all known commodities coming in, and because people were wise to LFF this year, Alucard was the clear and obvious favorite to finish in first place. Falcon and Diddy were guaranteed to steal each other's votes and prop Alucard up; we all knew that already. What we <i>didn't</i> know was who would finish in second place. Captain Falcon had been in two contests, and in both he got utterly embarrassed. Losing to Crono in a blowout will happen, but that 2007 result is so bad. In an all-Nintendo poll, this dude finished in third place behind Wario: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2872-division-3-round-1-banjo-falcon-fox-wario Wario! Who actually likes Wario unironically? So there was that with Falcon. It was very hard to make an honest case for him to win second place here, because just one year ago we saw him lose in a similar spot. Kratos had made one contest prior to this one, and this was the result: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2866-division-1-round-1-agent-47-kratos-a-midna-scorpion Doesn't exactly fill you with determination to pick him, does it? That, and Fails of gets nominated for every contest and pisses down its leg in <i>every</i> contest. A ton of people thought Falcon and Diddy were collectively weak enough to not finish in second place while stealing enough votes from each other to allow Kratos to squirt by into second place. Yes, people in 2008 had faith in Fails of finishing ahead of Nintendo. This is a real thing. It actually happened. The overall consensus ended up being Alucard > Diddy Kong, but it was not a confident backing of Diddy at all. It's almost like he was the choice by default. If you check the guru, oracle, and overall prediction percentage of the time, there was not a lot of faith in the little guy winning second place here, but the logic in him being the favorite was sound. Fails of had never proven to be anything but garbage. Captain Falcon had never proven to be anything but garbage. Diddy Kong had BrawlFEAR, The Hierarchy, and the given fact of Donkey Kong Country being more popular than F-Zero all on his side. Captain Falcon had been in Smash since 1999 and never amounted to much in contests, but Diddy making a hyped Brawl debut had to be worth a lot.... right? When this match started, this was Captain Falcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDj40PJqcCs When this poll started, Captain Falcon didn't just come out and legitimately end Diddy Kong's whole career -- Diddy got his ass kicked in this poll and hasn't made a contest since -- he was winning the entire poll outright. To this day a lot of people are confused how this happened, but the answer is simple. Rally spillover. Weird things happen after L-Block/Draven/Undertale/etc type matches. This was no exception, as both sides of the L-Block crowd backed Falcon with the board vote. This gave him a lead over Alucard for 15 minutes before things settled down to a simple Alucard > Falcon finish, and it stands to reason Falcon might have won this poll if it was a 1v1 match. For those playing the home game, the thought of Alucard losing to Captain Falcon 1v1 in 2008, or frankly in any other contest after 2002, was preposterous. But it was very likely would have happened if this was a 1v1 contest and this match happened directly after a Ryu/L-Block 1v1 match. Can you see why I hate this format yet? It robs us of so much. By the way, as one of the people who called this match, my logic was simple. Donkey Kong is a historic choke artist. Why would the less popular Diddy be any different, especially in the face of a character that Smash fans think of in much higher esteem? I know Smash fans really well; they <i>hated</i> Diddy Kong right from the jump and always had a healthy respect for Captain Falcon, plus Falcon has the cool factor. You can't say I didn't warn you, because I legitimately saw this coming. Us Smash fans are really, really picky like that. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947937827] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 4 Round 1: Alucard, Captain Falcon, Diddy Kong, and Kratos Aurion Alucard - 43108 [35.54%] Captain Falcon - 34435 [28.39%] Diddy Kong - 22950 [18.92%] Kratos Aurion - 20787 [17.14%] Total Votes - 121280 After a long run of predictable necessities, we were given our second surprise match in a row. This didn't have the aura of an L-Block match, but it was a surprise nonetheless. Alucard, Falcon, and Kratos were all known commodities coming in, and because people were wise to LFF this year, Alucard was the clear and obvious favorite to finish in first place. Falcon and Diddy were guaranteed to steal each other's votes and prop Alucard up; we all knew that already. What we <i>didn't</i> know was who would finish in second place. Captain Falcon had been in two contests, and in both he got utterly embarrassed. Losing to Crono in a blowout will happen, but that 2007 result is so bad. In an all-Nintendo poll, this dude finished in third place behind Wario: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2872-division-3-round-1-banjo-falcon-fox-wario Wario! Who actually likes Wario unironically? So there was that with Falcon. It was very hard to make an honest case for him to win second place here, because just one year ago we saw him lose in a similar spot. Kratos had made one contest prior to this one, and this was the result: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2866-division-1-round-1-agent-47-kratos-a-midna-scorpion Doesn't exactly fill you with determination to pick him, does it? That, and Fails of gets nominated for every contest and pisses down its leg in <i>every</i> contest. A ton of people thought Falcon and Diddy were collectively weak enough to not finish in second place while stealing enough votes from each other to allow Kratos to squirt by into second place. Yes, people in 2008 had faith in Fails of finishing ahead of Nintendo. This is a real thing. It actually happened. The overall consensus ended up being Alucard > Diddy Kong, but it was not a confident backing of Diddy at all. It's almost like he was the choice by default. If you check the guru, oracle, and overall prediction percentage of the time, there was not a lot of faith in the little guy winning second place here, but the logic in him being the favorite was sound. Fails of had never proven to be anything but garbage. Captain Falcon had never proven to be anything but garbage. Diddy Kong had BrawlFEAR, The Hierarchy, and the given fact of Donkey Kong Country being more popular than F-Zero all on his side. Captain Falcon had been in Smash since 1999 and never amounted to much in contests, but Diddy making a hyped Brawl debut had to be worth a lot.... right? When this match started, this was Captain Falcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDj40PJqcCs When this poll started, Captain Falcon didn't just come out and legitimately end Diddy Kong's whole career -- Diddy got his ass kicked in this poll and hasn't made a contest since -- he was winning the entire poll outright. To this day a lot of people are confused how this happened, but the answer is simple. Rally spillover. Weird things happen after L-Block/Draven/Undertale/etc type matches. This was no exception, as both sides of the L-Block crowd backed Falcon with the board vote. This gave him a lead over Alucard for 15 minutes before things settled down to a simple Alucard > Falcon finish, and it stands to reason Falcon might have won this poll if it was a 1v1 match. For those playing the home game, the thought of Alucard losing to Captain Falcon 1v1 in 2008, or frankly in any other contest after 2002, was preposterous. But it was very likely would have happened if this was a 1v1 contest and this match happened directly after a Ryu/L-Block 1v1 match. Can you see why I hate this format yet? It robs us of so much. By the way, as one of the people who called this match, my logic was simple. Donkey Kong is a historic choke artist. Why would the less popular Diddy be any different, especially in the face of a character that Smash fans think of in much higher esteem? I know Smash fans really well; they <i>hated</i> Diddy Kong right from the jump and always had a healthy respect for Captain Falcon, plus Falcon has the cool factor. You can't say I didn't warn you, because I legitimately saw this coming. Us Smash fans are really, really picky like that. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 1:13:18 AM #42:	Division 4 Round 1: Arthas, Ike, Pikachu, and Spy Arthas - 35479 [26.69%] Ike - 34477 [25.94%] Pikachu - 42741 [32.15%] Spy - 20239 [15.22%] Total Votes - 132936 In retrospect, the debate around this match should not have been much of a debate at all. Ike lost to Duke Nukem and Gordon Freeman, while Arthas's 2007 number was <i>clearly</i> undervalued from having to split time with Diablo. Pair that up with Ike having to split votes with Pikachu this year, and it's a wonder anyone picked Ike for second place. That, and Ike is a choke artist on par with Donkey Kong in these contests, but he doesn't have a bunch of legendary meltdowns and blown leads so he isn't thought of the same way. That, and just look at the match picture. Other than Pikachu sticking out like Nicki Manaj's ass implants, The Lich King is one of the coolest character designs out there. I loathe Blizzard with every fiber of my soul and even I like Arthas. That tells you everything you need to know. When the poll started, Board 8 put their bracket vote support behind Ike. Pikachu didn't need it, Board 8 loves them some Fire Emblem, and they knew Ike needed the help. It lasted all of 30 minutes. Arthas started making headway before the Nintendo Power Hour was finished, and by the time the night rolled on this match was completely over. Pikachu easily took first place, and Arthas took second place so thoroughly that he actually gave Pikachu a small scare overnight when he stalled the little rat. Yes it was due to Nintendo votes being split, but still. It was an impressive showing by Arthas. When the morning rolled around and THE KIDDIES WOKE UP (always a fun thing to mention whenever Pokemon is involved), Pikachu and Arthas both exploded. Pikachu going up had a direct correlation with Ike dropping like a rock, and that was that. Match over. Ike's day vote has always been pathetic, and this match is one of many you can point to to prove it. But then the after school vote hit and we saw one of the funniest failed comeback attempts we've ever had. At his peak, Arthas led Ike by 2500 votes. Ike won the ASV so badly that he would end up losing by only 1000. Ike even cut Pikachu a few times, which is hilarious to think about in retrospect, especially given it meant <i>nothing.</i> Where was all this support before school let out, Ike fans? Maybe Ike's contest history wouldn't be such trash if you all weren't such flakes. It's a cool little event to look back on, but it doesn't mean much and it certainly doesn't take away from Ike's contest history as a choke artist. And for those paying attention so far, BrawlFEAR looked to be a bit overrated so far in this contest. Obviously we know this wasn't <i>actually</i> the case thanks to Solid Snake, but for first party Nintendo characters the case could definitely be made that Brawl was not the factor it should have been. More on that when we actually get to Snake's run. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947938308] in ~Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 4 Round 1: Arthas, Ike, Pikachu, and Spy Arthas - 35479 [26.69%] Ike - 34477 [25.94%] Pikachu - 42741 [32.15%] Spy - 20239 [15.22%] Total Votes - 132936 In retrospect, the debate around this match should not have been much of a debate at all. Ike lost to Duke Nukem and Gordon Freeman, while Arthas's 2007 number was <i>clearly</i> undervalued from having to split time with Diablo. Pair that up with Ike having to split votes with Pikachu this year, and it's a wonder anyone picked Ike for second place. That, and Ike is a choke artist on par with Donkey Kong in these contests, but he doesn't have a bunch of legendary meltdowns and blown leads so he isn't thought of the same way. That, and just look at the match picture. Other than Pikachu sticking out like Nicki Manaj's ass implants, The Lich King is one of the coolest character designs out there. I loathe Blizzard with every fiber of my soul and even I* like Arthas. That tells you everything you need to know. When the poll started, Board 8 put their bracket vote support behind Ike. Pikachu didn't need it, Board 8 loves them some Fire Emblem, and they knew Ike needed the help. It lasted all of 30 minutes. Arthas started making headway before the Nintendo Power Hour was finished, and by the time the night rolled on this match was completely over. Pikachu easily took first place, and Arthas took second place so thoroughly that he actually gave Pikachu a small scare overnight when he stalled the little rat. Yes it was due to Nintendo votes being split, but still. It was an impressive showing by Arthas. When the morning rolled around and THE KIDDIES WOKE UP (always a fun thing to mention whenever Pokemon is involved), Pikachu and Arthas both exploded. Pikachu going up had a direct correlation with Ike dropping like a rock, and that was that. Match over. Ike's day vote has always been pathetic, and this match is one of many you can point to to prove it. But then the after school vote hit and we saw one of the funniest failed comeback attempts we've ever had. At his peak, Arthas led Ike by 2500 votes. Ike won the ASV so badly that he would end up losing by only 1000. Ike even cut Pikachu a few times, which is hilarious to think about in retrospect, especially given it meant <i>nothing.</i> Where was all this support before school let out, Ike fans? Maybe Ike's contest history wouldn't be such trash if you all weren't such flakes. It's a cool little event to look back on, but it doesn't mean much and it certainly doesn't take away from Ike's contest history as a choke artist. And for those paying attention so far, BrawlFEAR looked to be a bit overrated so far in this contest. Obviously we know this wasn't <i>actually</i> the case thanks to Solid Snake, but for first party Nintendo characters the case could definitely be made that Brawl was not the factor it should have been. More on that when we actually get to Snake's run. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 1:18:40 AM #43:	Look at that, 25% done already! More to come tomorrow. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947938416] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Look at that, 25% done already! More to come tomorrow. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
Fiop 12/05/20 1:24:23 AM #44:	Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts. --- "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude." - 1 Cor 13:4-5 <cite>Fiop posted [p:947938510] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/05/20 6:00:41 AM #45:	Feels like a running theme of both four-way contests was Nintendo's B-list getting picked off. Now characters like Wario and Shadow do OK in contests because of nostalgia, but in 2007/8? No way. This was my first contest, but especially after we figured out how to have 128-character 1v1 contests it's hard to look back fondly at 4-ways at all. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947942182] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Feels like a running theme of both four-way contests was Nintendo's B-list getting picked off. Now characters like Wario and Shadow do OK in contests because of nostalgia, but in 2007/8? No way. This was my first contest, but especially after we figured out how to have 128-character 1v1 contests it's hard to look back fondly at 4-ways at all. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PrinceOfKoopas 12/05/20 12:25:42 PM #46:	Fiop posted... Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts. They're supposed to work when he copy-pastes it into the Wiki. Also, tag. --- For the best videogame commentary story on the Internet (sometimes featuring GameFAQs poll of the days and contest discussion) visit https://www.koopatv.org <cite>PrinceOfKoopas posted [p:947948949] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Fiop posted... </cite> <quote>Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts.</quote>They're supposed to work when he copy-pastes it into the Wiki. Also, tag. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 1:10:26 PM #47:	Fiop posted... Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts. I know. When I write these, they're meant to be copy-pasted into the wiki. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947950271] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Fiop posted... </cite> <quote>Tag Also, FYI the italics tags aren't working in your posts.</quote>I know. When I write these, they're meant to be copy-pasted into the wiki. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 1:11:02 PM #48:	LinkMarioSamus posted... Feels like a running theme of both four-way contests was Nintendo's B-list getting picked off. Now characters like Wario and Shadow do OK in contests because of nostalgia, but in 2007/8? No way. This was my first contest, but especially after we figured out how to have 128-character 1v1 contests it's hard to look back fondly at 4-ways at all. Hot damn I forgot this was your first time. Now you're flirting with winning every year, lmao. Go win one of these things and join the club! --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947950293] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>LinkMarioSamus posted... </cite> <quote>Feels like a running theme of both four-way contests was Nintendo's B-list getting picked off. Now characters like Wario and Shadow do OK in contests because of nostalgia, but in 2007/8? No way. This was my first contest, but especially after we figured out how to have 128-character 1v1 contests it's hard to look back fondly at 4-ways at all.</quote>Hot damn I forgot this was your first time. Now you're flirting with winning every year, lmao. Go win one of these things and join the club! </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
LinkMarioSamus 12/05/20 2:14:43 PM #49:	I didn't actually enter a bracket or even post on forums though, it was just the first time I caught one of these things for real after having read so much about the contests the previous summer. --- Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders? <cite>LinkMarioSamus posted [p:947952275] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>I didn't actually enter a bracket or even post on forums though, it was just the first time I caught one of these things for real after having read so much about the contests the previous summer. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
PostContestUlti 12/05/20 2:28:54 PM #50:	Division 5 Round 1: Donkey Kong, Tails, Tidus, and the Weighted Companion Cube Donkey Kong - 29086 [21.25%] Tails - 20279 [14.81%] Tidus - 43425 [31.72%] Weighted Companion Cube - 44096 [32.21%] Total Votes - 136886 Pre-contest, the big debate surrounding this match was Tidus vs Donkey Kong. Neither character had been lighting the world on fire in recent contests, and some of their collective performances were outright embarrassing even in wins. Here are some of the low lights: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/965-west-division-round-1-tidus-vs-claire-redfield https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2104-dream-division-round-2-kirby-vs-tidus https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2516-patriot-division-round-1-squall-leonhart-vs-tidus https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2906-division-6-round-2-pikachu-tidus-leon-vivi https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/973-north-division-round-2-aya-brea-vs-donkey-kong https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1351-west-division-round-2-donkey-kong-vs-tommy-vercetti https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2106-flood-division-round-2-master-chief-vs-donkey-kong https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2907-division-7-round-2-kirby-l-block-kratos-donkey-kong The 2007 performances were especially egregious, but if you were a fan of the LOL X-Stats method, Tidus was always ahead of Donkey Kong in the stats. Conventional wisdom held that this would remain the case in 2008, and Tidus > Donkey Kong was the pretty overwhelming consensus pick. Oddly enough, these two would eventually have a 1v1 match in 2018, and all of the same logic that made Tidus the overwhelming favorite in 2008 was used there as well. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7244-division-1-round-1-tidus-vs-donkey-kong <b>LOL, X-STATS.</b> Ahem. As for the 2008 match, this was a case where people didn't exactly care about their brackets. This was all about rooting for the Weighted Companion Cube, and I'll say it again. If this was a 1v1 games contest, Portal would have won. It had the type of love that year that you saw from Undertale in 2015, and more importantly when it relates to this match, there was no anti-bandwagon with the Cube. Everyone loved the thing, and they were rooting for it to advance in this match. No one thought it would be L-Block or anything, but hey, maybe if it squeezed by this match, round 2 would be Mega Man, Tidus, the Cube, and some fodder, and from there who really knows? Yeah, the Cube did a lot more than merely "advance". When this poll started, it was clear the Cube had bandwagon joke love right from the jump, Tidus also left Donkey Kong in the dust once early bracket votes were exhausted, which paved the way for a fairly mundane Cube > Tidus result. Or so we thought. The Cube built up a 1000 vote lead pretty quickly, and the lead peaked at 1500 overnight. What happened from there was a pretty fun comeback attempt by Tidus, but again, I can't bring myself to care about these first place duels. If this was a 1v1 match, and Tidus not only chopped a 1500 vote lead down below 1000, but started winning the morning vote, Board 8 would have lost their minds. As-is, it was a meaningless comeback because both characters were advancing either way. This format robs us of so much. I will say though that Tidus coming back in the face of a bandwagoned joke character, despite not being particularly well-liked himself, was super impressive. He took it on the chin early, but eventually got that 1500 vote lead all the way down to 400. Had he won the ASV he might have made a push for first, but the Cube won it to put things away for good. He got the lead up to 800 before falling off a bit at night. As one might expect, people lost their minds over this one. The Cube didn't get a lucky draw and win second place like L-Block did in 2007. He straight up <i>won</i> his first match, and if he beat Tidus here then round 2 seemed like a bye. All he had to do there was beat Tidus again. And from there, all he needed to do was catch more bandwagon love. A lot of people felt like the contest was over after this match, and frankly the Cube <i>deserved</i> to win this contest. We know what eventually happened, but the crazy run Cube went on all started right here. This was a triumph. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI By the way, that video has almost 40 million views. Those are Megalovania numbers. I'm telling you, Portal would have won. As-is, the Cube came dangerously close. --- https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page <cite>PostContestUlti posted [p:947952703] in ~*Ultimate... [t:79149628]...</cite> <quote>Division 5 Round 1: Donkey Kong, Tails, Tidus, and the Weighted Companion Cube Donkey Kong - 29086 [21.25%] Tails - 20279 [14.81%] Tidus - 43425 [31.72%] Weighted Companion Cube - 44096 [32.21%] Total Votes - 136886 Pre-contest, the big debate surrounding this match was Tidus vs Donkey Kong. Neither character had been lighting the world on fire in recent contests, and some of their collective performances were outright embarrassing even in wins. Here are some of the low lights: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/965-west-division-round-1-tidus-vs-claire-redfield https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2104-dream-division-round-2-kirby-vs-tidus https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2516-patriot-division-round-1-squall-leonhart-vs-tidus https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2906-division-6-round-2-pikachu-tidus-leon-vivi https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/973-north-division-round-2-aya-brea-vs-donkey-kong https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1351-west-division-round-2-donkey-kong-vs-tommy-vercetti https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2106-flood-division-round-2-master-chief-vs-donkey-kong https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2907-division-7-round-2-kirby-l-block-kratos-donkey-kong The 2007 performances were especially egregious, but if you were a fan of the LOL X-Stats method, Tidus was always ahead of Donkey Kong in the stats. Conventional wisdom held that this would remain the case in 2008, and Tidus > Donkey Kong was the pretty overwhelming consensus pick. Oddly enough, these two would eventually have a 1v1 match in 2018, and all of the same logic that made Tidus the overwhelming favorite in 2008 was used there as well. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7244-division-1-round-1-tidus-vs-donkey-kong <b>LOL, X-STATS.</b> Ahem. As for the 2008 match, this was a case where people didn't exactly care about their brackets. This was all about rooting for the Weighted Companion Cube, and I'll say it again. If this was a 1v1 games contest, Portal would have won. It had the type of love that year that you saw from Undertale in 2015, and more importantly when it relates to this match, there was no anti-bandwagon with the Cube. Everyone loved the thing, and they were rooting for it to advance in this match. No one thought it would be L-Block or anything, but hey, maybe if it squeezed by this match, round 2 would be Mega Man, Tidus, the Cube, and some fodder, and from there who really knows? Yeah, the Cube did a lot more than merely "advance". When this poll started, it was clear the Cube had bandwagon joke love right from the jump, Tidus also left Donkey Kong in the dust once early bracket votes were exhausted, which paved the way for a fairly mundane Cube > Tidus result. Or so we thought. The Cube built up a 1000 vote lead pretty quickly, and the lead peaked at 1500 overnight. What happened from there was a pretty fun comeback attempt by Tidus, but again, I can't bring myself to care about these first place duels. If this was a 1v1 match, and Tidus not only chopped a 1500 vote lead down below 1000, but started winning the morning vote, Board 8 would have lost their minds. As-is, it was a meaningless comeback because both characters were advancing either way. This format robs us of so much. I will say though that Tidus coming back in the face of a bandwagoned joke character, despite not being particularly well-liked himself, was super impressive. He took it on the chin early, but eventually got that 1500 vote lead all the way down to 400. Had he won the ASV he might have made a push for first, but the Cube won it to put things away for good. He got the lead up to 800 before falling off a bit at night. As one might expect, people lost their minds over this one. The Cube didn't get a lucky draw and win second place like L-Block did in 2007. He straight up <i>won</i> his first match, and if he beat Tidus here then round 2 seemed like a bye. All he had to do there was beat Tidus again. And from there, all he needed to do was catch more bandwagon love. A lot of people felt like the contest was over after this match, and frankly the Cube <i>deserved</i> to win this contest. We know what eventually happened, but the crazy run Cube went on all started right here. This was a triumph. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI By the way, that video has almost 40 million views. Those are Megalovania numbers. I'm telling you, Portal would have won. As-is, the Cube came dangerously close. </quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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Board 8 > ~*Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Retro Summer 2008 Analysis!*~ (+) Yeah! (+)

Board 8 > ~Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Retro Summer 2008 Analysis!~