| abstract
| - The first match in Alucard's fourpack marked a rather odd tradition in these contests. In Summer 2002, we saw the fourpack of (6)Bomberman/(11)Kane/(3)Jill/(14)Kirby. Jill had to go through both Kirby and Bomberman to get into the third round of the contest. Oddly enough, Summer 2003 featured another fourpack with Kirby and Bomberman in it. And as everyone knows, Summer 2004's bracket proved that this was no accident when Kirby and Bomberman were stuck in the same fourpack yet again. The strange thing is that they've never faced each other; they were always on opposite sides of the fourpack, and one character had to take both of them down in succession every year. Even funnier is the fact that Jill, Alucard and Squall all lost their third round matches after making it past the Kirby/Bomberman combo of death. Summer 2005 was the only contest where this wasn't the case, and this was only due to Bomberman not making the field. But I'm getting well ahead of myself. Despite Alucard's good run in 2002, he was still a fairly unknown character that people didn't want to place much faith in. The big debate surrounding this fourpack was not whether or not Alucard would beat Bomberman, but which of the big trio (Alucard/Kirby/Ramza) would have the honor of getting their ass whipped by Sephiroth. Apparently beating Tails and Duke Nukem wasn't enough to convince people of how awesome Alucard is, and he remained as another of those Zero-like unknown characters. Most of the people who had played Alucard's game (Symphony of the Night) realized that he had the potential to be good in these contests, or at least good enough to win this fourpack, while those outside the circle barely had any clue who he even was even after his 2002 run. It literally took Alucard's run in this contest and edouble to get this board to see the light, but that's a different issue. The point is that people didn't have nearly the faith in Alucard that they should have, and most of the debates surrounded Kirby and Ramza. But more on that in the next writeup. The formality of Alucard actually beating Bomberman had to take place first, and Alucard did so in standard fashion right from the beginning of the poll. Bomberman's loss wasn't eye-popping enough for Alucard to get his due credit (though Alucard had a massive percentage early in the poll before leveling off), but it was a prototype win for Alucard regardless. He never flat-out kills opponents, but he's always been good enough to beat them. All the support of Japan couldn't save Bomberman from getting his soul stolen with ease in this match, and I don't know that he's really recovered since. Bomberman's big moment was in 2002, in a loss to Jill Valentine that saw the board whine like hell due to Bomberman not getting revenge for Kirby. Since then he's been knocked down to the role of decent fodder. He has a fanbase, but not a large enough one to avoid getting bad seeds. Most recently in Summer 2005, he missed the field outright. For Alucard, the fun was only beginning given that the first part of this massively debated trio was finally set into place. • Previous Match • Next Match
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