Nomination Rally Tournament

The Nomination Rally Tournament was an idea created by Leonhart4 prior to the SC2K5 contest. It was to find the top 5 "snubs" from the Summer contests, in order to create a more exciting braket. The winners of the first tournament were Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia, Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII, Revolver Ocelot from the Metal Gear Solid series, Vincent Valentine, also from Final Fantasy VII, and Sarah Kerrigan, from Starcraft. All of these character received such support that none of them got below a 5 seed in the contest - Revolver Ocelot went as high as a 2. However, the most successful characters were Tifa, who reached the divisional finals before bowing out to Sonic, and Vincent Valentine, who won his division in a nailbiter with Squall Leonhart, before getting a respectable 45% on eventual finalist Crono. The big disappoinment would be either Kerrigan, who was tripled by Vincent Valentine, or Ocelot who, as a 2 seed, was upset by Pac-man.

This year's rally tournament, ran prior to SC2K6 by Slowflake, fell into controversy in the latter stages when Slow closed a match involving The Prince of Persia and Sub-Zero 20 minutes early, ensuring that Sub-zero won by a single vote. However, Slowflake argued that he had never advocated an "exactly 24-hour rule", an said that he had to go out when the match was over. This was argued against by vocal Prince supporters including Explicit Content and My Immortal saying that he should have kept it for 24 hours and not made the new topic until later. Slow left shortly thereafter and has not been seen on the board since, though his login times indicate he is still lurking. The tournament was then taken over by previous runner Leonhart for the final 4 days.

In the end, it mattered little. The Prince of Persia topped the Round-Robin table, winning him the tournament and a 90% chance of getting through to the contest. The other three top-four finishers in the Round-Robin were Nightmare from Soul Calibur, Sub-zero from Mortal Kombat, and Captain Falcon from the F-zero series. The winner of a special "returner" tournament, a tournament for characters who had not seen the contest since 2003 or before, or the Spring 2005 contest, was won by Raiden, from the Metal Gear Solid series. He was seen to have more strength than met the eye, as his only contest appearance had been an SFF drubbing against Solid Snake. He defeated Fox McCloud in a Tiebreaker in the returner finals, and defeated Aeris Gainsborough in an upset in the Semis.