Results[]
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 8 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 61 |
| Match Date | Saturday, April 11, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 79.63% 59 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 91.81% |
| User Votes |
Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 7143 Night in the Woods - 1463 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 5644 Night in the Woods - 1461 |
Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Night in the Woods was one of the many, many happy-to-be-here low seed indie games that existed entirely to make the heavy hitter look good. Pokemon HGSS is one of the games I don't feel should have been allowed in this bracket at all, but now that it was here it was time to watch it work.
And work it did. Any doubt that this game wouldn't be a true proxy for Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal was put to bed immediately upon the game scoring an 82% blowout. I get that no one knows what Night in the Woods is, but that's still a very impressive start. It also put Skyrim on notice, because Skyrim had a crack in the armor. If you go into a match against Pokemon off of your A game, it's likely you lose. We already long since knew Pokemon would win the board vote in that eventual duel, but this match showed that it could go either way.
And no, NieR honks, that game never stood a chance. We'll get to that in round 3.
Ctes's Analysis[]
The final one of the three remakes would also score a big blowout. It’s always weird to speak of the Pokemon entries as a single game when they’re technically two, but it makes sense, I suppose. So far, there was nothing indicating that being a remake would hurt you in any way. It was also still hard to tell because it’s different when facing games that people actually think about remembering the past decade of games than when it’s against something not widely known. The big opponent for Pokemon HGSS was NieR Automata in round 3. It was the board favorite to make round 4 but expected to lose to Skyrim by everyone except a few that fear Pokemon too much, or underestimate Skyrim I suppose.
NieR looked pretty good today, but it wouldn’t take many votes against HGSS to prevent it from getting a higher percentage, so I’m pretty sure most people still believed in whatever they did before the contest began. Night in the Woods is a cute game that was pretty well acclaimed, but it hasn’t gotten the attention a bunch of other indie games have gotten. It released on everything and it’s from 2017, so here’ a good reminder that people aren’t actually voting for things because they’re from 2017, it just happens to have a lot of games we care strongly for. That might just be the most obvious statement you can make.
The same thing can be said about indie games, however. We grouped those together a lot more than we should, especially in the early part of contest. One indie game being good doesn’t really say anything about the others, regardless of exposure. That indie games generally seemed to do better likely just means that indie games in general have a easier time getting exposure today. That obviously increases the chances that we’ll have legit indie games, but it doesn’t mean a general rise. Of course, another match going on today was showing that better.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So we have finally a Pokemon game! But it is a remade of the Gen 2 which came out in 1999. And even though we had 4 generations since 2010 the one from the 2nd generation got in even though it barely count since it came out in 2009 in Japan but later in other regions. As I guy who has played all main Pokemon games multiple times for me the 2nd generation is the best. And I was so happy to see HG/SS with all the QOL upgrades. Gen 1 is special for everyone so it is above criticism and most pokemon fans agree that the 2nd generation is the best. On the other hand we have an indie game that I haven't heard anything about. Of course.
So for the match. Well HG/SS would win easily of course. The only thing that mattered was the final percentage. I do believe it did better than expectations since the average prediction was a bit lower than 80 so there you go. Well even though the latest Pokemon games seems to mess up the series since there are way too many complaints to count, they actually sold extremely well, they have sold more than 16 millions and the games are like 6 months old only. And this sales chart is old. So yeah people love their pokemons.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Long before the contest was even announced, I theorized that due to the apparent "two generations" rule, where two generations have to pass before people can start getting nostalgic for a Pokémon game, that Black/White could be a beast in the Game of the Decade because it'd have the benefit of three generations having passed. Then Allen decided to allow remakes into the contest, possibly fueled by RE2Make winning GotY 2019 (wait, what?!), and even Gen V, which I'm pretty sure is remembered fondly because its metagame was very much still evolving when the Gen VI games came out (blame this on Gen VI being when Game Freak shifted to worldwide releases; Gen V didn't just feel shorter than previous generations; it was shorter), was completely missing from the bracket, let alone the newer games, but Gen IV got a representative with a 3-seed. Because as we all know, being essentially from the previous decade is a winning strategy for Game of the Decade. Just ask "Ocarina of Time 2". (I'm joking, of course; Majora's Mask proved it was legit in 2015.) Though of course, no GameFAQser would ever forget that HGSS was released in 2010 and not 2009. You could say its release date is...burned into their minds.
https://tenor.com/view/horatio-csi-miami-yeah-meme-gif-16346536
Other than that, there's not much to say about this match. No entrant in Round 1 received more raw votes from unregistered voters than registered, but Night in the Woods came closest. There were 1501 more registered voters than unregistered, and of these 1501 votes beyond the unregistered output, a grand total of 2 went to Night in the Woods. GameFAQs loves its Pokémon.