| abstract
| - Of all the Add/Remove junk pre-contest, only one such change truly bothered me, and it was this one. SoulCalibur had zero business getting into this contest over the original Smash Brothers, especially given what we know now. None. Is there any doubt Smash Brothers places in this match, and possibly even threatens to take first? It would have clearly gotten Ocarina'd in the second round, but it would have stunned all the Starcraft people. Speaking of which, calling Starcraft is something I'm vastly proud of this contest. While people were out calling for another insane run due to the format, I was out calling Starcraft the most likely game to flop in this contest. People seem to forget how perfect a storm 2004 was for Starcraft, and only L-Block's run has ever been more impressive in my eyes. It was the perfect amount of vote totals, the perfect bracket placement, the perfect hype, the perfect opponents, the perfect everything. This contest? No way. For starters, "fourways are better for rallying" is a myth. Rallying in general is a myth outside of close matches late, and deciding entire matches by thousands of votes is ludicrous. There's a measure of rallying in every match. L-Block aside, people generally just vote for who they want. There's also Starcraft's opponents in 2004: Halo, Kingdom Hearts and Wind Waker are pretty hated on the internet. Against a high-selling mainstream Final Fantasy like 8? No way. And on the note of FF8, it's usually stuck behind FF7 in past polls. We've never really seen it by itself until this contest, unless you look at Squall, who has gotten quite strong these days. There's also the little-known fact that Starcraft is a really, really old PC game on a site that doesn't generally care about PC games. If we get to use the "it hasn't gotten any younger" argument with anything else, why not Starcraft? So no, I wasn't at all surprised when Final Fantasy 8 came out and killed Starcraft in this match. The people that had Starcraft potentially rallying past Ocarina in the division and winning the entire contest were especially ridiculous. Calling FF8 a potential top 10 game (a term used much too loosely in this contest) was obviously premature given future rounds, but I will never call this match an accident. The extent of the blowout was a surprise, but the blowout itself was bound to happen. Final Fantasy 8 shined with 7 removed from the picture, even with Xenogears in the poll stealing some Square votes. Frankly, Starcraft got lucky to place at all. If Smash Brothers were in this poll instead of that slug SoulCalibur like it should have been, Starcraft would have easily been pushed to third place and we would have had a "SHOCKING" contest result right in the first round. From huge 16 seed run to losing in the first round the second expectations are placed upon it. But thanks to scoring second place here almost by default, Starcraft in round 2 was allowed one final stand before its ultimate exit.
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