Vincent Valentine's Contest History

Who is Vincent?
Vincent Valentine, born on October 13th, 1952, is an intriguing character surrounded in mystery. His parents are unknown, his childhood is not documented, and any sort of other personal information on him is mostly left up to imaginations. What is known about the immortal of the night is that set out to join Shinra, Inc. in 1977, around the ripe age of 25 years. Vincent applied for a job in Shinra's vicious little group known as the Turks. An organization within Shinra that handled all the stuff the public was not to suppose to hear or know about. Once such mission had him being assigned to protect a couple of scientists on the top secret JENOVA Project. The two scientists in question would become a major part of Vincent's life -- Professor Hojo and Lucrecia.

Time eventually began to move, day in and day out, Vincent watched over the two scientists and made sure nothing happened to them or any information somehow got leaked out. He also had begun to develop feelings for the female scientist, Lucrecia. She was interesting, smart, and beautiful. Eventually seeing his opportunity, he develops the courage to confront her, asking if she would marry him. Lucrecia, somewhat shocked and confused, turns him down. We eventually find out it was because of her guilt of killing one of Vincent's family members. In her emotional distress, she accepts the first person who is willing to hear her out. Vincent later sees Hojo and Lucrecia in each other's arms. Figuring the two were already together, he decides to back away and not pursue her or the matter any further. Her happiness was more important to him than her being his.

Fast forward sometime later, Vincent now has gotten word that Lucrecia is pregnant with a child. Being the twisted and insane scientist that he is, Hojo manages to manipulate Lucrecia into experimenting on the child by injecting Jenova Cells into the womb, altering the child's molecular structure. Feeling this would lift her guilt and allow her to atone for her sin, she accepts his idea. Vincent is completely opposed to this asinine idea that Hojo has brought forth. He desperately protests to the both of them that they cannot do such a thing, but Lucrecia is looking down, regretful, and Hojo could not care less about what Vincent thinks. As unfortunate as it is, the experimentation continues on and Lucrecia eventually gives birth to the child. The man who would single handedly be the biggest threat to the planet had been brought into the world. Sephiroth, son of Lucrecia, was born. For Vincent, the worst part of all of this is that Lucrecia had apparently died during the child birth.

It is when he gets word of this information that Vincent completely snaps. He is devastated at the loss of Lucrecia, and is no longer willing to be logical or try to appeal to Hojo. He violently confronts Hojo about what had happened to her. The two both argue intensely, but Hojo ends the matter by quickly pulling out a gun and killing him right then and there. Yet again, being the sick and twisted man that he is, he begins an entirely different experimentation on Vincent. Hojo performs anatomic reconstruction on Vincent, which creates the horribly disfigured character we know him as today. He is given a number of cosmetic changes. For example, his right arm is now replaced by a golden metal claw of sorts, he is wrapped ripped of his normal Turk uniform and given a different attire. Other such changes are his inability to continue aging (he stops around the age of 27) and his humanity is ripped from him -- he now has the ability to randomly transform into hideous beasts.

Sometime after the experimentation, Vincent has awoken on top of the very table Hojo used to experiment on him. Having understood what had happened to him, he nearly goes insane. He is entirely different from what he had remembered; he had effectively been killed, brought back to life, and then turned into a monster. The man had gone through one of the most vicious experiments that one could go through and throughout it all he managed to somehow survive. Later on, Professor Hojo returns to the Mansion to see the awakened Vincent literally mad -- he is on the brink of insanity. From here, Hojo puts him into the basement and locks it. It would be many years after that someone would run across the notes left behind and the key to the basement found within a safe. With Cloud's arrival, Vincent was ready to tackle the world again. After 28 long years of slumber, it was clear what needed to be done. The long nightmare now over, it was now time to take care of business...

"I don't care what you are doing, so much as the idiotic way that you are doing it." - Vincent

(Writeup courtesy of Heroic Mario)

Vincent's Contest History
Win-Loss Record: 7-3

Summer 2005 Contest - Devil Division - 5 Seed
 * Devil Round 1 --- Defeated (4) Sarah Kerrigan, 79200 [79.00%] - 21058 [21.00%]
 * Devil Semifinal --- Defeated (1) Dante, 53882 [54.00%] - 45893 [46.00%]
 * Devil Final --- Defeated (2) Squall, 49446 [50.59%] - 48297 [49.41%]
 * Elite Eight --- Lost to (2) Crono, 42546 [44.62%] - 52814 [55.38%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 11th Place [32.60%]

Everyone knew that Vincent would cause damage when he finally made the contest field, and it's a damn shame that it took this long for him to get in.

That said, a lot of people didn't peg him to be this strong and the prediction percentages behind his winning the Devil Division were pathetic. Somehow Vincent got lost among all of the Magus/Squall hype (as well as all of the Aeris/Tifa/Vincent debates), though people took notice of him when he came flying out of the gate and flattened Kerrigan in his first match. He then had a hiccup at the beginning of his match against Dante, but was able to recover for a fairly mundane win in that match. Though this was perhaps more about Dante's newfound 1 seed/DMC3 strength than it was a Vincent weakness.

Vincent then got tangled up in a legendary duel with Squall of FF8, but after being deadlocked with Squall for almost half the match, anti-voting and SFF finally got the better of Squall and put him under. This gave Vincent the Devil Division title that few saw coming, though he had one last run in him before his time in Summer 2005 was done.

He was a lock to lose to Crono, but few expected Vincent to turn a 60-40 beating into a tame 55-45 loss. A lot of people blame the release of Advent Children in Japan mid-contest for Vincent's strength in that match, and arguments have actually been presented that the entire Devil Division should be adjusted down in the X-Stats. But regardless of how or why Vincent did so well against Crono, he won the Devil Division before AC was ever released based off of his own strength. This cannot be taken away from him, and hopefully he becomes a mainstay in contests from here on in.

Summer 2006 Contest - Blast Division - 5 Seed
 * Blast Round 1 --- Defeated (4) Ganondorf, 67321 [52.59%] - 60685 [47.41%]
 * Blast Semifinal --- Lost to (1) Sonic the Hedgehog, 59497 [47.91%] - 64699 [52.09%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 8th Place [40.44%]

After a much-debated first round affair with Ganon, Vincent found himself able to boost enough to pull the upset -- if you want to call it that. However, Vincent was unable to get up to Noble Nine levels, and fell in the second round thanks to some bad luck. Thanks, female half -_-

Summer 2007 Contest - Division 4 - Second Group
 * Division 4 Round 1 --- 1st place, 55265 [38.68%] - Princess Zelda, 42692 [29.88%] - The Boss, 22633 [15.84%] - Miles "Tails" Prower, 22287 [15.60%]
 * Division 4 Round 2 --- 2nd place, 40309 [27.75%] - Link, 74350 [51.19%] - Bidoof, 19278 [13.27%] - Princess Zelda, 11297 [7.78%]
 * Division 4 Final --- 2nd place, 30825 [21.78%] - Link, 64214 [45.37%] - Crono, 29123 [20.58%] - Zero, 17359 [12.27%]
 * Contest Quarterfinal --- 4th place, 14277 [9.85%] - Link, 52795 [36.42%] - Sephiroth, 45633 [31.48%] - Mario, 32239 [22.24%]

What else can you say about Vincent that hasn't already been said? He turned a heavily debated first round match with Zelda into a joke, beating her by nearly 10%. As if that wasn't enough, in the minds of some, Vincent broke the Noble Nine with a comeback victory over Crono in the third round. He has definitely made his case for being a top 10 character in these contests, and he might even be able to take on a Noble Nine character one-on-one. That's something that nearly all of us want to see in the next contest.