Results[]
Monday, April 6, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 6 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 43 |
| Match Date | Monday, April 06, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Sonic Mania - 72.89% 57 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Sonic Mania - 78.37% |
| User Votes |
Sonic Mania - 5629 Ys VIII - 3181 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Sonic Mania - 4356 Ys VIII - 2907 |
I bought Ys VIII because of this contest. True story. I looked into every game in the field, at least in part, and that one legitimately looks incredible. Can't wait to start! But what is with Japanese games and dumb subtitles? Look at this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys_(series)
Not that anything will top the idiocy of these names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts
This match was never going to be unpredictable -- Sonic Mania was always going to win it easily -- but Sonic only getting 63% here was very disturbing. The game undershot expectations by 10%, and opened up all kinds of hype trains for Super Meat Boy beating it in round 2. We'll get to what happened when the time comes, but you know you've botched your round 1 match when you have people hyping up the possibility of Super Meat Boy upsetting you.
By the way, the ultimate end result here wasn't people overestimating Sonic. People vastly underestimated Ys VIII. The series has been around for 33 years, so obviously it has a fanbase somewhere.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Sonic Mania was a huge board favorite, having gotten a solid nomination rally and earned its high seed as a result of it. It looked to be in a position where it could make round 3 and it was also the favorite to do so. Sonic Mania is popular for a modern Sonic game and the name still carries some strength with it. It’s crazy to think that there might not even be a Sonic game in the bracket if the board hadn’t pushed so hard for it to happen. Maybe Allen would’ve kept one in for legacy, but there’s no Mega Man despite those being just fine as well, no Metroid although that one didn’t have the best options. The Noble Nine is mostly represented in Smash Bros these days, except of course for Zelda and Mario, which are as dominant as ever.
Super Meat Boy awaited in the next match and upon many indie games doing so well, the idea that Super Meat Boy could perhaps beat Sonic Mania in round 2 was gaining some traction. 15% of gurus went with before the contest, but it was getting more popular. Sonic Mania is most likely among the more preferable round 2 opponents to draw. An exciting battle of overseeded entrants at the cause of board 8 looked to come up.
Then the match happened, and Sonic Mania went way below expectations. The board vote was very great, but Sonic fell drastically after that. It was against a Ys game, which isn’t something you expect a lot of people to know much about despite how many of them there exists. The franchise has existed for a long time but has only recently been promoted from nothing to niche. Sonic needed to do better here. It looked to be very lucky it didn’t draw something else or it might have not made it out of round 1. The next match looked to be close. Super Meat Boy looked fine, but not all too great considering it was facing something we expected to be among the worst of this already fodder filled bracket.
We know that this result is just not as bad as one could have expected. Ys VIII is apparently not all that bad. I mean, there’s still not much point in having it in a regular games contest other than acknowledging it wasn’t trash, but it could’ve won the right match in this contest perhaps. If board 8 had pushed it to a high seed, it suddenly becomes a lot more possible. We have nothing to compare it to, because it’s the first time ever a Ys game has been in the bracket, but I don’t think another entry could’ve done better at any point unless perhaps we had a games contest in 1990, which we obviously didn’t. For all the worthless series we have, maybe you just have to be extremely patient and you can one day become worth something in a contest here.
Safer777's Analysis[]
A Sonic game finally! I thought the last good Sonic game was back in the 90's? Or not. Still nice to have at least 1 Sonic game here. I have played only the Sonic games back on Mega Drive 2 so I don't know anything about them after that, but I do know that almost all of them suck. As for YS...it is a JRPG but I haven't heard of the series and I find it strange because apparently there are at least 8 of them? Damn! They must have a lot of fans! Or at least I think so? Well they made so many of them so someone has to be bying them! Apparently they are around for more than 30 years! I am baffled! Okay obviously nobody knows all franchises ever but man a JRPG series that is going on for more than 30 years and this is the first time I hear of it! Well it happens to the best of us I guess!
So for the match. This match was never in doubt but Sonic managed to disappoint! Classic Sonic. I mean people thought that even a doubling would be bad for Sonic Mania and it scored even lower than that! So yeah. People just don't care for the Sonic games I guess. Well makes sense I guess. But fans keep buying them so the company isn't in a hurry to make them good as the old days probably. Or something.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Sonic's woes have been talked about at length for many contests, so a blowout win felt unlikely even though Mania was the return to the series' roots that the fans had long been clamoring for and Ys has always been a fairly niche RPG series. Then again, it's still an RPG series, and a Japanese one at that, so, you know, Flowchart.
Or maybe not. In fact, out of 57 Oracle predictions, a grand total of one predicted Sonic Mania to win with a percentage lower than it actually did, though it did so by a wide enough margin to not even get a top 5 out of it. Was it Sonic antivotes or just RPGFAQs up to its usual shenanigans? We'd hopefully find out next round, since its next opponent would be an indie game regardless of who won the next match!