Best. Series. Ever. came down to Zelda/Final Fantasy Championship that smashed the record books
| Announced: | May 8th, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Started: | 1 July 2006 |
| Ended: | 1 August 2006 |
| Winner: | Legend of Zelda |
| Contest Winner: | metroid13 - 80 points |
| Notable matches: | Castlevania vs Kingdom Hearts Sonic vs Super Smash Bros. |
This was the Article of the Week for the week of 6/11/06.
The Spring 2006 Contest was a GameFAQs contest called Best. Series. Ever. Nominations were opened in early May, having only been announced in a topic on Board 8, and not on the GameFAQs home page. The bracket was released on June 8th, 2006.
Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Super Mario are all tipped to dominate, with an all-but-inevitable victory predicted to go to FF. (lawl)
Popular outsiders garnering support on Board 8 included Monkey Island, Phoenix Wright, Seiken Densetsu, Mega Man Legends and Densetsu no Stafi. None of which made it into the contest.
32 series were included, with the weakest probably being Civilization (which, while popular, is not typically the kind of game associated with GameFAQs posters) or Shadow Hearts (relatively unknown, although popular on parts of GameFAQs)
Prior to nominations appearing, it had been believed that the contest would be cancelled due to the aftermath of the latest redesign. The most popular predictions for possible topics were a second Best. Game. Ever. or a Best. Female. Character. Ever.
The Bracket[]
| Hyrule Division | The Legend of Zelda Metal Gear | The Legend of Zelda Final Fantasy | The Legend of Zelda | |||
| (1) The Legend of Zelda (8) Civilization | The Legend of Zelda Mega Man X | The Legend of Zelda Metroid | ||||
| (4) Suikoden (5) Mega Man X | ||||||
| (3) Pokemon (6) Star Ocean | Pokemon Metroid | |||||
| (2) Metroid (7) Kirby | ||||||
| Snake Division | ||||||
| (1) Metal Gear (8) Soul Calibur | Metal Gear Fire Emblem | Metal Gear Kingdom Hearts | ||||
| (4) Fire Emblem (5) Silent Hill | ||||||
| (3) Castlevania (6) Halo | Castlevania Kingdom Hearts | |||||
| (2) Kingdom Hearts (7) Harvest Moon | ||||||
| Mushroom Division | Super Mario Bros. Final Fantasy | |||||
| (1) Super Mario Bros. (8) Madden NFL | Super Mario Bros. Warcraft | Super Mario Bros. Super Smash Bros. | ||||
| (4) Grand Theft Auto (5) Warcraft | ||||||
| (3) Sonic (6) Devil May Cry | Sonic Super Smash Bros. | |||||
| (2) Super Smash Bros. (7) Dragon Quest | ||||||
| Ultima Division | ||||||
| (1) Final Fantasy (8) Diablo | Final Fantasy Mega Man | Final Fantasy Resident Evil | ||||
| (4) Mario Kart (5) Mega Man | ||||||
| (3) The Elder Scrolls (6) Street Fighter | Street Fighter Resident Evil | |||||
| (2) Resident Evil (7) Shadow Hearts | ||||||
Results and Analysis[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
On May 8th, people all but gave up on there being a Spring Contest at all. The next announcement from Ceej involving brackets would likely have to do with the summer, but Ceej was never one to be predictable. The announcement did come, but it was for a series contest rather than a character battle.
Around one month later (though it seemed like forever), bracket. One month was by far the longest period ever between nominations and brackets, and you can imagine all the whining that took place. Nevertheless, the stage was set. 32 series, 4 divisions of 8 series each. People complained about a lot of wasted potential and such (and perhaps this would turn out to be true), but contest is better than no contest.
Contest rankings, best to worst:
July 2006 would be > Summer 2005 if it were 64 series instead of 32. I enjoyed this contest, especially the influx of votes. It just needed to be longer with more upsets, that's all.
Ngamer's Analysis[]
Alot of the time I see the BSE swept aside and dismissed along with the Villains Contest, and I don't think that's too fair. Ok, so there weren't a whole slate of epic matches or great back-and-forth affairs, but at least these were somewhat uninteresting polls between decently-powerful opponents, unlike the utter fodder of Spring '05. I actually like the BSE quite a bit, aside from CJay's fumbling up on bracket placement... when you've got three entrants (Mario/Zelda/FF) so clearly ahead of the field, it's an absolute must that the other quarter be a Division of Death. Leave MGS in there as the one seed, slip Smash Bros. in as an underseeded dark horse, and load the other two positions up with powerhouses of the Sonic and Mega Man variety, and we could have had a Division people would still be talking about today, Div 128-style.
Getting back to the point, the BSE had awesome upsets in CV > Halo and WC > GTA, insane vote swings in CV/KH, a strong 50/50 shootout in RE/SFII, SSB surprising everyone by rSFFing Mario itself, and all that on top of the greatest Final match in site history. Now granted I'm a little biased due to all the crap me and other Zelda supporters took for daring to suggest that Final Fantasy wasn't going to blow through the whole field in a cakewalk, but even if the result went against your bracket you had to appreciate what an incredible slugfest that Zelda/FF Championship turned out to be. Not only was the final result within a percentage point, FF actually won every update outright for over 10 hours of that poll with its massive Night Vote. So, yeah, highly underrated Contest overall, though I'm not crazy enough to say it deserves a shot at being considered the best Contest overall or anything like that.