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GameFAQs Second Annual Character Battle
Kirijini writes "GameFAQs' Character Battle has begun again. Over the next two months, the 64 most popular videogame characters will duke it out for your votes in a popularity contest that is, to my knowledge, the largest event of this kind on the internet. This is like the People's Choice Awards for videogame characters, so be sure to get your vote in! Last year had some pretty tense battles." The poll currently in progress has Pikachu up against the dangerous Fox McCloud, so get voting.
While I think there's been a lot of sarcasm so far in this topic, this poll is truly an amazing thing. It brings out the most rabid fan support anyone has ever seen.
In particular, last year, there was one poll between Mario and Cloud Stryfe (from Final Fantasy 7) and Cloud had the initial lead. Then planetgamecube.com put up a news item about the character battle and things started to balance out. Suddenly there was an outcry of how unfair that was for the Cloud supporters and votes started to surge on other sides. Rumors of people going into IRC channels just to say "Vote Cloud" or "Vote Mario" ran rampant.
It was as if these things truly mattered.
In the end, Mario won that particular poll. A few days later, Mario was up again, but this time against another Square character, Crono from Crono Cross (Trigger? I've never played either. I'm not a big RPGer).
From the start, the two were neck and neck with Crono having a slight lead most of the day. Then votes swung back and forth wildly up until almost midnight EST, not because it was over, but because CJayC had noticed some cheating on the Crono side and penalized Crono 300 votes (there were so many votes on both sides that it's hard to believe cheating wasn't rampant on both sides, but a serious bulk of votes were caught from one source and removed).
Outrage ensued from many and Mario finished again with a win.
2 days later, Link went on to beat Mario soundly and win the contest altogether in the finals. Link never even had a close match. Hopefully this year, the ending will be just a little more exciting.
Overall, it's a great big flame inducing mess most of the time, but that's always good too. It's nice to see people getting excited as fans, even if they take it a little far.
"If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates." -Willy Wonka
It's because GameFAQs has a heavy RPG slant (Let's face it, who needs a walkthrough for a fighting game?). This year was determined partly by nomination, so who you see is who the most people wanted. Me, I wanted Dan Hibiki to get in this year.
Last year, though, Scorpion of Mortal Kombat fame pulled everyone for a loop by getting into the Elite Eight.
Last year, there was a "Kane" in the tournament, and while people were making their NCAA-style brackets, he was consistently mistaken for either Deckard Cain (Diablo), Kain (Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver), or Kain (FF4), and perhaps a couple other people who's name sounds like Cane. Alas, it was the Command and Conquer Kane (The guy who only shows up on a TV), so he sank like a rock in the first round.
Not only do RPGs have FAQs and walkthroughs, people will get obsessive and write in depth FAQs about each of the minigames in an RPG, and on how to find/train/create the best characters, and on how to get the most powerfull items, and anything else that they feel isn't covered well enough in the main FAQs.
I don't know enough fighting games to know which to check, but most have two or three main FAQs, a character FAQ for each character (which all seem to be just a plain subset of what's available in the main FAQs) and a half-dozen or less in depth FAQs. FFX for comparison has 17 main FAQs and about 75 more specialized FAQs.
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