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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Contest Semifinal: Cloud, Solid Snake, Sephiroth, and Kirby

Cloud - 41927 [30.5%]
Solid Snake - 42250 [30.74%]
Sephiroth - 22134 [16.1%]
Kirby - 31149 [22.66%]
Total Votes - 137460

The match picture was a prophecy! All four of those characters ended up in Smash Bros!

Thanks to a few factors -- Cloud and Sephiroth in the poll together, Solid Snake being on a rampage thanks to MGS4 and Brawl, and Kirby somehow being the only Nintendo rep in the match -- this semifinal match was guaranteed to be a lot more interesting than the first. There was some hope that either Kirby would pull another crazy upset, or that Snake would manage to sneak out a first place finish from Cloud and Sephiroth eternally dueling. The only real guarantee going in is that Sephiroth had no chance. Before this poll, Cloud and Seph had been in 6 matches together. Cloud was 6-0. The only chance Seph ever had was in the 2003 final when he was boosted up by angry Link fans. Beyond that, unless Smash fans miraculously decide to 100% vote for him against Cloud in the future, Seph will never finish ahead of the guy on our site.

For an hour, we almost got <i>both</i> crazy spots. When this poll started, Snake was <i>flying</i> off with first place, and Kirby was riding high as the only Nintendo rep while Cloud and Seph were off dueling somewhere. The first half hour of this poll was something else, because Snake was in first and Kirby was in second, with the latter having a 100+ vote lead on Cloud. Cloud did eventually shake Kirby off despite Sephiroth's best efforts at leeching support, but by the time Cloud got into second place he was already more than 650 votes behind Snake.

Kirby would never again contend in the match, but shout out to the little guy for the run he made this year. Of Kirby's 5 matches this year, 4 were very entertaining, including really fun upsets over Master Chief and Sonic, two Ertyu Specials, and a near-upset against Cloud. You can't ask for better than that.

Conventional wisdom would say that Cloud would begin coming back on Snake any time now, but the problem is he was sharing this poll with the worst possible albatross there is. Only Tifa could have leeched him this badly, and it led to Cloud never actually threatening for first place at all. Cloud was able to cut 200 votes off of Snake's lead overnight, but Snake got it all back when the sun was up, and had such a hold on first place that he built up an 800 vote lead at one point.

By the time Cloud made a legitimate push at first, it was too late, but he still gave it one heck of a run. Snake fell off pretty hard in the evening and second night vote, and Cloud used this time to chop off almost 500 votes from Snake's lead. If Seph wasn't there, Cloud takes first place. If this format wasn't dog shit, this battle for first place might have actually mattered. But I've said enough on that subject for one contest. Let's wrap this PCA up and go home.

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Yet another match where everyone involved is in Smash now

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Contest Final: Link, Crono, Solid Snake, and Cloud

Link - 49345 [33.68%]
Crono - 17916 [12.23%]
Solid Snake - 40663 [27.76%]
Cloud - 38581 [26.33%]
Total Votes - 146505

This contest had one final surprise for us after all. In the Summer 2008 Contest, it turns out that the most rallied, bandwagoned character would not be L-Block, the Weighted Companion Cube, Sandbag, or any of the other obvious joke characters. It would not be a random midcarder suddenly finding their wings, even though we saw really fun upsets all throughout the spectrum in this contest. It wouldn't be the legion of BrawlFEAR entrants. It wasn't even Zack, Mega Man X, or Crono, and those three had some real chops this year.

Turns out our big bandwagon would be... Solid Fuckin Snake himself!! People looked at the semis like a fluke, because there was the obvious issue of Sephiroth being in the match. But when the final started, all hell broke loose on Board 8 for a <i>long</i> time. Before getting into it, let's look at how Snake was building to this for quite some time.

In 2002, Snake got tripped up in an upset by Crono. He used the loss to fuel himself, and he got a little bit stronger, a little bit better every year. In 2003, he had a close loss to Mega Man. In 2004 and 2005, Snake took a step back, and I think a lot of it had to do with absurd Nintendo boosts paired with Solid Shit. But hey, if you're going to have a redemption arc you might as well almost lose to Frog and Bowser.

In 2006, Snake made a clear leap, avenging his losses to Mega Man, winning the male side of the bracket, and eating a close loss to Samus in the final. In the Battle Royal that year, he pulled a crazy upset over Sephiroth with Cloud's help. The symmetry of him upsetting Cloud with Seph's help this year should not go unnoticed. In 2007, L-Block happened to everyone, but Snake had to deal with him 4 times.

Eventually, it all led here. Very, very few characters in the history of video games deserve a rallied bandwagon more than Solid Snake. He took all that momentum, paired it with a Smash appearance and Metal Gear Solid 4 in the same year, and went <i>nuts</i> in this contest. Snake looked like a killer all contest long, and in typical stealth fashion, everyone forgot about him as they focused on the characters mentioned in the first paragraph. They remembered in the semis though, and they <i>definitely</i> remembered him in the final.

When this poll started, Snake wasn't merely in a fluke second place spot over Cloud, with an assist from Crono. Nononono. That would be the easy way. Snake does things the hard way. Alone. No help. No sound. Procurement on site. Perfectly. Solid Snake came out in this poll and took aim at the fuckin <i>king,</i> and when you aim for the king, you best not miss.

Snake came out in this match and took the lead over not just Crono, not just Cloud, but <i>everyone.</i> Including Steroid Link, the only Nintendo character here, who was out for giga-revenge after L-Block happened a year ago. It was one of the all-time great finals moments we've ever had in a GameFAQs Contest, and it's sad it's so forgotten about with how much everyone hated the format -- and trust me, I get it.

Snake didn't lead by <i>much,</i> mind you, but he led. It was a 19 vote lead at the freeze, and he went up with the first update. Link started coming back pretty quickly from there, and we all figured the match was over.

...nope! Snake held strong, built up a 150 vote lead, and held strong in the 100-150 range all night long heading into the morning vote. It was one of the all-time great contest accomplishments, and I would have loved if this poll were only six and a half hours long. Unfortunately, it was 24 hours long and Link went full Giga-Oni-Link when the sun came up to put a wrap on his revenge tour and end the Summer 2008 Contest. Snake did not go out a loser, though, because he would still end up in second place. Cloud, in large part due to Crono's presence and Snake's bandwagon, never had a shot. Cloud did cut a 3700 vote deficit down to losing by only 2100 and go out like a warrior in his own right, but he failed to place in the final nonetheless. And Crono? His final was the rally over Vincent and subsequent demolishing of Mario. His "final" happened long before the actual final of this contest, and for Crono he was just happy to be here.

Your winner of the Summer 2008 Contest was Link, finishing the revenge tour and retaking the crown. In second place, in shocking fashion, was Solid Snake. Given bracketeers get points for second place, I say we give Snake half a contest win for this one!

All in all, the format may have sucked, but the contest was decent enough with crazy vote totals to keep things watchable until the very end.

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Bonus Match: Classic Link, Young Link, Toon Link, and CD-I Link

Classic - 95234 [62.34%]
Young - 9502 [6.22%]
Toon - 22108 [14.47%]
CD-I - 25919 [16.97%]
Total Votes - 152763

How this match got more votes than the actual final, I'll never know. I get that this was a big joke to laugh about how dominant Link was, but this match really should have been Link vs Snake. It took 5 years for us to actually get that as a bonus poll and it required Draven pissing everyone off, of all things.

The match itself was funny for a minute, as CD-I Link took the bandwagon votes and was winning for a couple minutes. Once that dried up though, Classic Link annihilated everyone in one of the funniest cases of SFF we'll ever see. Not only do we have Same Game SFF, but we have Same Character SFF! And spare me the "different Links from multiple time lines" crap. No one cares.

95,000 votes for the winner of a bonus poll is a record that probably never falls. Seeing CD-I Link get second place here was legitimately funny, and I'm actually surprised Young Link got last place. Do people really like Toon more than him, or was this legitimate Ocarina of Time SFF? I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't like Young Link, given he kinda sucks in the beginning of Ocarina of Time, but that begs the question of why Majora's Mask didn't matter more. Then there's the business of Smash Bros, where we legitimately have three of these characters as separate fighters somehow. I'm probably overthinking it.

Congrats to Link on the win, and congrats to CD-I for being what all true warriors strive for!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLQ8Mqyf8sw

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Post-Contest

I hinted at it many times in these writeups, but this format SUCKS! It killed so much of the fun, it caused so many weird upsets that would have been far better as 1v1s, and it just sucked so much air out of the room. I know people will look at the vote totals then and now and think we're having first world problems, but this contest could have been sooooo much better. I mean come on people, it took me 12 years to sit down and write all this up. Me, the guy who lives to write PCAs every year, even for contests that are legendarily awful like Years and Rivalry Rumble.

Contest ranking up until this disaster:

Spring 2004 (Games)
Summer 2002 (Characters)
Summer 2003 (Characters)
Summer 2005 (Characters)
Summer 2007 (4-way Characters)
Summer 2006 (Female Bracket)
Spring 2006 (Series)
Summer 2008 (4-way Characters)
Summer 2004 (Characters)
Spring 2005 (Villains)

No ultimate loser with this 4way junk.

Sorry it took so long to write this!

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With that, I've caught my white whale.

I have no more rewrites to do, either. It's all the future from here. I was considering rewriting 2004, but it's passable enough and frankly, I like to look back at my shitty old writing now and again to see how far I've come.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next contest!

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Thanks for the writeups, Ulti. They're one of the best parts of every contest.

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PostContestUlti posted...

No ultimate loser with this 4way junk.

I calculated the 4-way Ultimate Losers a while back.

Jade Curtiss in 2007, Kratos Aurion in 2008, GTA: San Andreas in 2009.

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Read all of this. Amazing as always. Of course I didn't remembered any of these matches so nice to see this analysis. Couple things.

1)I was a hopeful young man then, I am a bitter old man now.

2)You can see how things change per year. We had some characters that of course people knew and such. If you ask about these characters now, most will say huh? Who are these people?

3)The vote totals. Yeah everyone says that but having above 120000 votes in matches that people don't care and having barely 20000 votes in matches that people care is sad. And we have the double votes thingy too!

4)I like how in first round some joke characters advanced and people were calling the contest over. Damn!

5)This contest had Mudkip and Zackfaqs eh? And you are right, over 880 Pokemon now but of course the original 150 still reign supreme.

6) Screw 4ways!

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Good job Ulti. Not your fault this was such a forgettable contest in the long run. Kirby's and Snake's feats wouldn't even matter that much since Sonic, Sephiroth, and Cloud all got their revenge in subsequent contests (though yeah Snake beat Sephiroth fairly in 2010, but at this point that might say about as much about Sephiroth as about Snake).

At least the first four-way contest had L-Block (plus maybe Vincent upsetting Crono), and the third was a rare games contest.

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Hot take: Four-way contests aren't good, but the bracket placements were a bigger issue than the format in 2008. Here's a good guess of what 2008 would have looked like with the same seeds and placements converted into a traditional 64 entrant bracket. Would it really have been any better?

https://pastebin.com/0nNpE0aV
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Funny to see that Ulti considers Serge to be a joke character. It's astonishing how Crono is far more beloved in this site despite both characters being total mutes in their games.

To be fair not only is Chrono Cross a whole lot less beloved than Chrono Trigger, but the game has SO many characters vying for attention.

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Very good stuff!!!

Crono has a much better design, cooler techs, and has the ability through sprite design to emote a hell of a lot. Crono says a ton without ever saying a word.

Serge barely exists in his own game. PS1 graphics don't really express mute characters the same way.

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Serge's design is awesome but yeah that game isn't about getting invested in the characters.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

I actually like Chrono Cross these days

O_O

Wait, what?

@UltimaterializerX

All I remember about the 2008 contest:

Sonic Team dropping like flies one after another
The Reign Of Mewtwo
Pac-Man > Ness
KOS-MOS losing to Frog by less than 100 votes in the first round
The decline of L-Block
The mediocre run of Weighted Companion Cube

Am I missing anything? No.

It was worse than the 2004 contest.