Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 12 |
| Match Date | Friday, September 14th, 2007 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Magus - 41.48% Bomberman - 21.53% Phoenix Wright - 21.30% Crash - 15.66% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
Magus first place (2pts) - 21.17% Magus second place (1pt) - 30.40% Phoenix second place (2pts) - 26.89% Phoenix first place (1pt) - 16.86% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Magus - 51.57% (18,939) Phoenix - 43.75% (16,067) |
This was such a weird match, and we may never again see another match personify a winner so well.
First and foremost, what the hell Magus. Ever since Knuckles beat him in 2005, it's been like popping a balloon with him. He went from being hyped as the Link-slayer in 2003 to now getting beat by the likes of Alucard and.... Sandbag. I mean damn. Even here when he gets first place in a poll, it just looks... bad. 31% in a fourway poll is not good when your opponents are fodder, fodder, fodder. Board 8 may be obsessed with Phoenix Wright, but facts are facts. He's weak. And Magus's percentage against these guys is just awful. Any dream of him making a deep run in this contest went totally out the window here. This wasn't like that Oblivion > Tales of Symphonia match in 2009 where the top game doing bad was due to good competition.
Secondly, what the hell Crash Bandicoot. Before this, the best last place finish we'd seen was something like 18% from Agent 47 in that weird Scorpion > Midna match. Then this happened. Sometimes, last place isn't really last place. We really need to get Crash a better seed one of these years so he can go out in style with a win. One win over Ulala (who?) in 2002 isn't really fair, he needs something else.
And of course, what the hell Phoenix Wright vs Bomberman. Before that even happened, Phoenix was scaring the living hell out of Magus himself for first place. Phoenix got this ridiculous board vote, which was to be expected in his first-ever winnable contest match. He ran out of gas quickly, but led Magus for 30 minutes and put another nail in that guy's contest coffin. He's worse than the PS3 at this point.
If you look at the update chart, this really shouldn't have been much of a match at all. Phoenix led outright for 30 minutes, and then when Magus caught up he was still out in second place over Bomberman. When an hour was up, he led by 700 votes and just kept on going up. Magus was totally sucking it up in first place, so there was plenty of love to go around for everyone else. What this basically meant is Phoenix had all night to build a lead, and though he slowed down in the dead hours he was still going up. Then the morning vote came, and he still kept going up. He didn't really start losing momentum until the brats went to school, but by then he led by 1300 votes and the match seemed over. I mean really, who cares about Bomberman?
OBJECTION!
Apparently, lots of people care about Bomberman. Because as the afternoon wore on, he started building some momentum and kicked off one of the slowest comebacks ever. But a slow comeback is still a comeback, and all those update charts people slave over saw Bomberman stay within proper parameters update after update after update. It didn't really seem like such a problem at first, but he kept it up for so long that it became a legitimate trend come ASV time. That 1300 was knocked down to under 800 by the time the brats got out of school, and then it gained a little steam and just kept on going.
But as the hours wore on, the comeback got slower and slower. Under 800 at 3 turned into 700 20 minutes later, which turned into 600 over an hour later, and 400 an hour or so after that. The problem Bomberman ran into is he ran out of a lot of steam come evening vote time and he was up against a character Board 8 refused to see lose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq1jknZp0ic
It was just like one of Phoenix Wright's games, really. Here you have a character no one cares about (Bomberman) trying to kill Phoenix and a Deus Ex Machina (Board 8) swoops in at the last second to save Phoenix's ass. He never actually does any of the heavy lifting himself. Bomberman got that lead all the way down to 18 votes, but that's the closest he would get. Seriously, did you really think Board 8 was going to let Phoenix lose this?
Bomberman could have been up by 1000 with an hour left and he still might have lost. That's how crazy the Phoenix love was in 2007, and to this day he's the mascot of the Board 8 Wiki. Although with how bad Apollo Justice was, with how bad Phoenix's hobo character was in it, and with how mediocre the Edgeworth games are, that series may finally be getting stale on Board 8.
Stats and Analysis[]
- Crash overperformed by +5.60%, the #24 most impressive performance of 2007
- Magus underperformed by -10.61%, the #1 most disappointing performance of 2007
ahh, Phoenix. has there ever been a character as disproportionately loved on board 8? EVERYONE loves this guy, and his games have been played by literally everyone on the board. the only other games that can claim that are major-title Nintendo and Square games. PW games are second only to the Smash series as far as being talked about on board 8. that's pretty impressive for a game that most of the gaming world hasn't even heard of.
because of this, Phoenix is totally unique. he truly is board 8's character. his never-give-up underdog personality fits in perfectly in a contest, where he is one of the strangest characters we've ever seen. GameFAQs is about the only place where Phoenix Wright would have a chance against two well-known icons -- albeit third-tier ones -- in Bomberman and Crash. Phoenix may have had a slight bracket advantage, but don't let that fool you - by the time the match came around, most everyone thought Phoenix was the underdog. Phoenix had a dedicated fanbase, but how big was it? was it enough to get 30,000 votes? PW games barely sold that much. with Frog struggling mightily a few days earlier, Magus probably wasn't going to dominate this poll like Phoenix would need in order to place. PW fans -- ie, all of board 8 -- had hope, but not a whole ton.
in the minutes leading up to the match, everybody expected Phoenix to take the lead in the opening seconds, but nobody expected this. Phoenix started out with about half the votes -- no big surprise -- but didn't die. he hung in the low-mid 30s for the first five minutes, besting former board 8 wonder Magus with ease. PW rushed out to a 70 vote lead and held it all the way to the freeze. it's difficult to explain how huge this was because of what happened with L-Block later in the contest, but the board exploded. moreso than anything we saw for L-Block, even. the first hour was renamed the Phoenix Wright power hour, cries of SUCK IT MAGUS were everywhere, and everyone was floored. we knew it wouldn't last, but holy crap!
the 00:10 update came in and Phoenix lost some of his lead on Magus, but picked up another 100 votes on Bomberman. every update that he held the lead was even more amazing, including the 00:20 update where he actually increased in percentage. Phoenix held the lead for 25 minutes and built up a 500 vote lead on Bomberman within that time. pretty damn impressive for a point and click lawyer game character.
maybe my favourite stats topic of all time:
thengamer.com/stats/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt451-500/Stats%20and%20Discussion%20Pt478
Phoenix had a hell of a first hour, but we all knew it wouldn't last. Phoenix rolled up a 700 vote lead in that first hour, but slowed to a crawl from there. Bomberman stalled him at 1:20, a really ominous sign for a group of fans that knew Phoenix was going to flop hard come daytime. Phoenix pushed his lead out to 1300, but it was a slow push and Phoenix was dying off as he was running out of fans. even during the during-school vote, Phoenix was fading. by the time school got out, the lead was already down to 800 votes. it seemed like a matter of time before Bomberman took the lead. Phoenix had a nice little stall to start the afterschool vote, but from there it was all Bomberman. Phoenix's lead shot down below 500 in no time, and by 7 it was below 200. Phoenix stalled him at 139 votes three times in four updates, then started to fight back out of absolutely nowhere. Phoenix's random surge died after an hour and Bomberman cut the lead below 100 votes. 67, 49, 32, 18..
HOLD IT!
Phoenix simply would not give up the lead, and the longer the match went, the better you felt about Phoenix's chances since you knew his fans would do whatever it took if the match was close. Phoenix pushed the lead back out to 87, Bomberman cut it back to 54, Phoenix responded with a few small gains, and Bomberman just kinda gave up. the last few minutes were anticlimactic, but not to Phoenix fans -- seeing Phoenix hang on for dear life and win was one of the greatest moments of the contest. board 8 celebrated pretty hard after this match.
of course, watching Edgeworth get doubled by Bidoof mere seconds later shut us up pretty quick. :)
Match Trends[]
tranny's Day-After Analysis[]
Phoenix Wright is a unique character. He is universally adored by the board, and the only people I've seen speak out against him are the ones who think he's "overrated". Granted, we have a lot of those on Board 8, but when you combine Phoenix's never-give-up attitude with his relative unknown stature outside of GF, you have a guy that *everyone* likes to cheer for.
Because of that, he has an opening vote like you wouldn't believe. Phoenix Wright took the lead the second the poll started, which wasn't unusual. He did the same thing vs. Gordon Freeman last year for 10 minutes. But this was different. Phoenix Wright was dominating the poll, holding one-time board favourite Magus way behind. The board vote used to be Magus's best time, but not with Phoenix Wright in the poll. It took Magus a couple of minutes to even get to 25%, and Phoenix was increasing his lead. The board was going absolutely wild the whole time too. Stats 478 is one of the more legendary stats topics because of it.
Phoenix ended up holding the lead over Magus for 25 minutes, and he was absolutely dominating Bomberman at the time. Phoenix built a 709 vote lead over Bomberman within one hour and showed no signs of slowing down. everybody expected a big board vote, but not *this* big. Yeah, Phoenix had the majority of the brackets, but board 8 is not exactly objective when it comes to Phoenix Wright. When Phoenix was *actually* in the lead, people were like "...holy crap, he can do this."
Of course, Phoenix's fanbase is a wild, rabid one, but not a particularly large one. Phoenix stopped increasing at about 2am and just kind of sat there going 50/50 for a long time. Bomberman was already stalling Phoenix and the poll was only two hours old. Bomberman was sure to win the day vote when the time came. Phoenix's chances didn't look all that great.
Phoenix pushed his lead to 1300 votes by morning, and amazingly, he didn't get killed by the morning vote. The morning vote is usually a sign of how the afterschool vote would go, but he went 50/50 during that time. Maybe he could hold on after all! Unfortunately, Phoenix is the kind of guy that just runs out of gas as the match gets older and older. He bled percentage throughout the day and started losing votes at about 11am. By 1pm, he was losing votes really fast and it looked hopeless. by the time school let out, his lead had shrunk by 500 and the worst was yet to come.
Bomberman didn't slaughter Phoenix like most thought he would, though. He'd take 15-20 votes an update, but nothing brutal. Occasionally he'd win a big one, but then Phoenix would win one back to even it up. Bomberman brought Phoenix's lead down to about 150 votes... and just stopped. At one point, Phoenix stalled him at 139 votes for three straight updates. Then the lead shrunk to 136, jumped back up to 160 or so, and then went back to 139. It was almost comical. It was a dead stall right when Bomberman was about to take the lead. Phoenix fans were pretty much watching the clock and holding he could hold on here. Bomberman pushed the lead below 100 votes at 9:00, but he was getting nowhere fast. He eventually got it down to 67, 49, 32, 18...
HOLD IT!
Phoenix pushed the lead back to 80 votes, Bomberman knocked it down to 50, Phoenix pushed it back to 90, Bomberman cut another 40 votes off.. and then he ran out of time.
Phoenix had won. Bomberman had actually won more updates than Phoenix throughout the day, but Phoenix never trailed. He bent, but absolutely would not break.