Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | 1989-1991 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 8 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Final Fantasy IV - 47.70% Mega Man 3 - 33.76% River City Ransom - 10.50% Crystalis - 8.09% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
FF4 first place (2pts) - 68.03% FF4 second place (1pt) - 24.16% MM3 second place (2pts) - 62.20% MM3 first place (1pt) - 26.97% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Final Fantasy IV - 92.19% (35,305) Mega Man 3 - 89.17% (34,149) |
This was about as ho-hum obvious as a match could possibly get, and it didn't tell us much of anything unless you wanted to make a bunch of FF1 vs FF4 comparisons and give Mega Man 3 some hope for future rounds. Or more specifically, delude yourself into thinking Mega Man 2 could still beat Tetris. Though in fairness, I'm sure if you did something weird like put FF4 as 55% of FF1's 2004 strength, then assume Tetris wasn't SFFd that year, you could probably get Mega Man 2 > Tetris. Not like it matters, since this was decided in due time.
Worth noting here is the FF1 > FF4 hype more or less died here. Scoring 50% in a fourway poll is not the easiest task, and it would take some insane SFF from here to get FF1 ahead. Thankfully, this was all decided in round 2. Mega Man also had a decent enough performance for this one round, though this shut the door on some of the crazy talk of FF4 and 1 splitting badly enough to sneak Mega Man 3 into second place. This was impossible.
I can't make much more out of such a predictable match, so I'll just whine about Crystalis. Crystalis is the best game none of you have played yet. Any random idiot can access NES games by now, so get to it! It truly is a masterpiece, and it deserved much better than a potential last place X-stats finish.
Match Trends[]
Ngamer's Same Day Analysis[]
Match Prediction[]
I'm having a very time deciding where to go with my percentages on this one, and it's actually because of the bottom two games. I'm almost certain that one of them is going to tank horribly and perhaps even challenge PoP's new mark, but I just can't decide which. Crystalis would seem the natural choice given that it's going to be RPG-smashed by an old school FF title, but surely it at least has a hardcore fanbase that isn't going to abandon it for anything? Sure it will be super small, but I'd think it would have to be big enough to save it from a PoPing. So maybe RCR is the better choice- after all, it got absolutely trampled by Pong, a game that we now realize is extremely bad fodder itself. Guess I'll just have to pick them both to do "very bad" but not "super bad" and hope for the best.
As regards MM3, bah... I actually picked it to win here in my initial gut bracket, figuring this would be an up year for MM and that FF4 would lose a small percentage to Crystalis. After MM2's bomb I'm very glad I flip flopped on that one, but even so I'm not entirely sold on FF4. I've just got this feeling that old Mega Man couldn't possibly be as weak as Pong made it look, especially in light of Sonic's good showing, and so I'm glad that this time around MM isn't looking at a massive pic disadvantage. In fact, it actually dominates this pic- RCR looks like total junk, Cry I guess catches the eye a little but is so unrecognizable that I doubt it matters, and I don't think that FF4 is going to blast this poll like people are talking, not with it sporting Amano art (or something similar) like that. That's kind of old fashioned look always stings FF characters, and I'm banking on tonight not being an exception.
So with MM looking stylin' I think it manages to hold that old and washed out looking FF under 50% and win back at least a small token of respect for the classic series. I'll go with...
- Final Fantasy IV - 49.92%
- Mega Man 3 - 34.36%
- River City Ransom - 8.39%
- Crystalis - 7.32%
Hm. Seems pretty solid!
Next Day Review[]
Alright, so FF4 ended up doing a touch better than I called for, finishing a little bit over 50. HOWEVER, check out these vote totals:
- FF1 - 49958
- FF4 - 55555 (with 3 updates left to go)
Now obviously people weren't as excited to vote in a match without Mario/massive Battletoad rallying and that could have limited FF4's potential somewhat, but still, I'm loving how many voters were attracted like flies to the "Final Fantasy" name. All signs appear to be pointing to a very close SFF-fest between that series come R2, and so I'm still holding out hope for my Mega Man upset. Whooo!