Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | 1 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 3 |
| Match Date | Saturday, September 20th, 2008 |
| Oracle
|
Marth - 28.56% Niko Bellic - 25.41% Kefka - 24.28% Duke Nukem - 21.84% |
| GameFAQs
|
Marth first place (2pts) - 19.83% Marth second place (1pt) - 29.09% Duke second place (2pts) - 21.04% Duke first place (1pt) - 30.68% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Marth - 48.92% (20,988) Duke - 51.72% (22,189) |
This is one of the weirdest matches to look back on in 2020, and I legit feel like my eyes are lying to me. Marth winning a debated match? Kefka in last place behind a GTA character without being portrayed as a vegetable? Duke Nukem pulling whatever the hell he pulled here? This was just all kinds of wild, and the match itself was also borderline ridiculous. This thing would be mentioned with the titans of contest lore if it had any meaning beyond round 1 fun.
First, the pre-hype. I remember how heavily debated this match was pre-contest, which always tends to happen with these weird round one fodder matches for some reason. Marth was the runaway consensus favorite thanks to BrawlFEAR, which in and of itself was the precursor to the not yet seen PokeFEAR (skip to 2010 for more on that). The real fun came in trying to figure out who would win second place. There was a lot of arguing about whether or not it would be Kefka or Niko Bellic. Niko was an untested GTA character, and the last time people had faith in one of those, well....
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2067-mushroom-division-round-1-ness-vs-carl-johnson
RacistFAQs was born. But fine, a lot of people just figured RacistFAQs was real and went back to 2003, when Tommy Vercetti made his debut. Vercetti wasn't some amazing character or anything, but he won a couple matches and went even with Donkey Kong. He also had that all-timer against Kefka in 2005, which to this day is one of the most flagrant examples of Smurf's vote stuffing we'd ever seen: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2084-flood-division-round-1-kefka-vs-tommy-vercetti
Well Vercetti beat Kefka there, and Niko's game (GTA4) is a lot more popular than Vice City, so it stands to reason Niko should have been stronger than him. It's not like Kefka had done much of anything to instill confidence to this point, but you could go either way.
What next to no one expected however was Duke Nukem going totally insane from out of literally nowhere. And I mean literally no where. Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle was so long and became such a meme that CJayC put him on a milk carton in his 2004 match picture against Cloud. Duke's entire contest history leading to this match was a fodder win over Iori Yagami (who?), a fluke victory over perennial contest choke artists Ike and Gordon Freeman, and whole lot of getting his ass whipped. Unless you bought into the 2007 result proving Duke is some hidden 4way star, there was zero indication this was coming. None.
The early parts of this match were all kinds of nutty, but Marth pulled away for his expected first place finish. Past him, it was a bloodbath. Kefka and Niko fought it out close, as we sort of expected, but you also had Duke Nukem of all people right in the match for second place. After a couple updates, Niko was the first to fall off, proving yet again that Grand Theft Auto on this site would never be worth a bucket of piss. The users here just don't like that series.
But then in the shocker of all shockers, Duke Nukem started putting Kefka away and destroying him overnight. It was not long before Duke caught and passed Kefka for good, only about an hour in, and that was that. Kefka and Niko never made a push for second after that, but Duke was not done there! Remember Marth running away with it at the beginning of the poll? He had a 700 vote lead on everyone two hours in, and no one thought much of it when Duke started stalling the lead. Overnight and leading into the morning, he started coming back to make a push for first place outright. While all this was going on, Niko was coming back on Kefka to push for third place, but third means nothing in these fourways so who really cares. Spoilers, Niko erased an 800 vote lead to win third place (whatever that's worth) and hand Kefka his latest embarrassment.
By the time the morning vote hit, Duke had erased Marth's entire lead. This was in the face of BrawlFEAR, an absurd amount of Nintendo hype, and again, Duke Nukem doing NOTHING in gaming for nearly a decade. Nothing. It was one of the most random, nutty performances we'd ever seen, and had Duke pulled this off it would have been such a legendary choke job by Marth. Thankfully for him Marth caught the morning vote and put Duke down for good, but Duke was easily able to hold on to second place.
I legitimately don't have the answer as to why Duke was such a random breakout star in these fourway polls. My best guess, legit, is this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3KdcTgrno
It came out in 2007, and back then Ventrilo harassment was all the rage. In a contest loaded with joke entrants and people trying to get in on various jokes, who knows. Maybe this is why Duke did so well. I can't think of anything else. You got me, Duke. I got nothin'. If anyone else has a better guess, I'm all ears!
(And yes I am aware going up against low midcard fodder helps.)
"Three matches in and everyone's bracket was in shambles. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the board had yet to get full points." -Charmander6000
Stats and Analysis[]
- Duke overperformed by +4.51%, the #19 most impressive performance of 2008
- Marth advancing was the #9 most surprising result of Round 1
Now, there are some that will disagree with me and assert that THIS was the most debated match of Round 1 (to those people I say you clearly haven't gotten your daily dosage of GameZACKS today). And while it's true that it was a doozy, most felt it was really only for second rather than first place. Marth was BrawlFEAR after all, and certainly more proven even in his loss to DK than these three chumps. But then again, Niko was untested - even though untested GTA is never a good sign - and Kefka always has his fair share of supporters each match. Who knows, anything could happen, right?
And so it did - while very few took the pick, and even though the writing was on the wall after what happened last year with Duke and Gordon Freeman, Duke Nukem shocked the world by scoring the second upset of his career. And while he would eventually go on to take an easy second place to Marth, overnight he actually took the lead from him. Remember, this is the same guy that we put on a milk box as a 16 seed to Cloud, who hasn't had a new game in FOREVER (you're gonna get a lot of these terrible references with these writeups, just warning you now). Meanwhile, Kefka, with even more levels of fail in his picture than usual, ended up in dead last even to a pretty big disappointment in Niko. Yeah, you didn't exactly need to be much to beat these two chumps, but let's at least give credit where credit is due, right?
And at any rate, Duke looked like a heavy favorite to advance next round now as well. Lucario, the board favorite, was going to have to pull some serious magic to keep himself in contention to advance next round.
Interesting Facts[]
- With 7.98%, this match marked the smallest gap between 1st and 4th place of any four-way contest match.
- Kefka's 21.51% was the largest percentage received by any 4th place entrant in a four-way contest match.
- Both of these records were broken during the Spring 2009 Contest by Diablo II vs Halo vs Knights of the Old Republic vs Grand Theft Auto III, only to be broken again two days later.
- Out of the 24 possible permutations for the characters' order, 16 occur at some point during the match (assuming ties can count either way.)
Match Trends[]
Ngamer's Same Day Analysis[]
Match Prediction[]
This four pack is just a mess no matter which way you look at it. Let's try to make at least some sense of this probable disaster by reviewing some base stats.
Last Known Values
- Marth - 17.12% (2007)
- Kefka - 19.07% (2007)
- Duke - 20.87% (2007)
- Niko - unknown
Poor Marth got the short end of the stick- he got stuck in a match with Donkey Kong, and those two hurt each other pretty badly while allowing Kratos to scamper off to an undeserved blowout. I give Marth the benefit of the doubt in this pack because he at least showed us something- after trailing big early, he made a huge SSB-fueled after school comeback and beat DK outright for a few hours. Yeah it was just DK, but even so, I wouldn't pick anyone else in this group to be able to do the same.
Kefka's 19 is probably just about accurate. After a great start he had one of the worst collapses ever against Marcus Fenix to throw that match away with the ASV. But, we know he's going to do well in the early going, we know Square has been looking great so far this year, and does Niko really have the kind of mini-Master Chief ASV potential that Marcus showed us?
Speaking of Niko, he's of course a first-timer without a Contest history, so let's assign him the 16.25% that Vercetti earned last year in R1. Probably Tommy got casual-SFFed somewhat by MC and deserves higher, but on the other hand, why would anyone believe Niko is even in Tommy's league, SFFed or not? I remember when GTA3 became the big thing years back and shot to the top of the FAQ charts. Then VC was launched, and it was almost always the #1 FAQ page on the site for a year and a half. Then SA came out, exact same thing. GTA4 did the same... for a couple months, but look where it sits now. 26th place. Scroll a little further down the list and... there's GTA:SA, in 33rd. It's September 2008, and yet there are nearly as many people playing and needing help with the GTA game that launched in 2004 as there are for the one from earlier this year. Sorry, but if that isn't the definition of a lack of staying power I don't know what is!
And then there's Duke. I've got to admit that with the rest of this group so up in the air, I gave serious thought to picking him for second if he was going to get his Duke Milk'em picture. As is though, he pulled down a value of around 21 in that opening match, which is probably about accurate. But then he completely collapsed as soon as decent competition arrived in R2. The rest of this group isn't exactly "decent", but they're at least a step up from what he saw in '07, so I can't see him picking up those "meh at least I recognize this guy" votes he used back then.
In summary, Duke seems like a reliable choice for around 20% but not much more, Marth seems a reliable choice to ride the SSB ASV to around 30, Kefka seems reliable to hang with Marth or lead outright early before collapsing back to the mid 20s during the Day, and Niko... is totally unreliable, and could do anything from jobbing horribly into the teens to giving Marth a serious run. But when I throw my best guesstimates into the pot, here's what I come up with for these guys:
- Marth - 32.74%
- Kefka - 24.18%
- Niko Bellic - 22.08%
- Duke Nukem - 21.00%
I don't like it, but with Niko involved I probably wouldn't like anything!
Ngamer Says: Marth > Kefka
Next Day Review[]
Haha! Well after that 0/2 start I was pretty much sure we'd be moving to 0/3, given how nutzo that last 4 pack was. And for the first time all Contest I was right! The good news is, now we're moving on to one of the 11 R1 matches that I did go ahead and call a lock in my initial bracket analysis. Does that really mean anything though, with how badly these results have been making us all (I mean Guru, Oracle, BOP, AND Crew) look like fools?