TDMMC Video Game Bracket (VGB)

[Dave Gray]

I've been tracking these brackets in my own personal spreadsheet. A few observations...

- As of now, we're still missing 4 matchups in the first round.
- There are 4 matchups Dave posted that the Brackets weren't listed:
 Halo vs MK3, Elder Scroll vs TMNT, FF7 vs 1942, and Zelda vs FF2
- There are 5 brackets by my count (Activision, Capcom, Konami, Namco, and Square). Am I F'ed up?

Yeah...but it's not your fault.
I'm going to post the last 4 right now.
As for the one list of brackets, I just didn't list them on that one day.  I'll put a list of everything after the first round is done.
There are only 4 brakets.  There is no Square bracket....Joe screwed up.

[Dave Gray]

Round 1 is done, and here are the winners from their respective brackets:

Capcom:
Pitfall
Doom 2
Zelda: Link to the Past
Castlevania
Excitebike
Metroid Prime
Punch Out
Super Mario 64

Konami:
Ms. Pac Man
Goldeneye
TMNT
Metroid
Super Mario Kart
GTA: Vice City
Resident Evil
Virtua Fighter 4

Activision:
Galaga
Contra
Battlefield 1942
Zelda
NFL 2K3
Half Life
Tetris
Super Mario 3

Namco:
Scorched Earth
Resident Evil
Halo
Double Dragon
World of Warcraft
Tecmo Super Bowl
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Mega Man 2

I’m not going to post the 2nd round matchups, until they’re upon us.  All you can be sure of is that no game will play another outside of its bracket until the final 4.

Some surprises from Round 1:
- Donkey Kong Country going down to Virtua Fighter 4.  I didn’t see that coming.
- Street Fighter II falling to Zelda.  While I knew Zelda would get lots of votes, I thought SF2 would take it, considering the kind of people we have on the site.  …not to mention, SF2 started off with a huge lead.

Notables that didn’t make our list of 64:
- Helicopter.html – we already knew it was the best…why ruin the contest?
- Burger Time
- Pole Position – we already had a few racing games and old Atari games…couldn’t make room for it.
- Splinter Cell – we chose Metal Gear Solid 2 instead.
- Max Payne
- Mortal Kombat 2
- Sonic – I just thought that it was popular, but never really a great game.  We had many other more deserving platformers.
- RBI Baseball
- Current generation Madden
- Blades of Steel
- Centipede
- Dig Dug
- Battletoads
- Super Metroid
- Super Mario World
- Donkey Kong
- Ghosts and Goblins
- The Simpsons (arcade)
- Golden Axe
- A slew of Lucasarts games (Grim Fandango, Monkey Island)
- Kings Quest
- Killer Instinct
- Daytona USA
- Toobin’
- Tapper
- Duck Hunt
- RC Pro Am
- Star Wars (arcade)


Go ahead and add any others. 

[Brian Fein]

Splinter Cell got hosed!  BOO!  MGS2 didn't even win...

[Lee]

Go ahead and add any others.

Frogger!!!

[Dave Gray]

Yeah....frogger was pretty dope.  No arguments from me.

[Dave Gray]

Games left after Round 2:

Capcom:
Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!
Excitebike
Doom 2
Zelda: A Link to the Past

Konami
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Metroid
Super Mario Kart
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Activision
Contra
Half Life/Counterstrike
Tetris
Super Mario Bros. 3

Namco
Tecmo Super Bowl
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Halo
Double Dragon

Some surprises from Round 2:
Super Mario 64 is out.  I personally think that's a top 5 of all time.
Virtua Fighter 4 got blanked.  I'm not surprised that it lost, but it beat Donkey Kong Country in the first round and couldn't even get 1 vote in the 2nd.
Goldeneye is out.  This game was my personal best ever...and it got beaten pretty badly by Vice City.

[Dave Gray]

The great eight:

Capcom
Punch Out!! (NES)
Doom 2 (PC time exclusive)

Konami
Super Mario Kart (SNES)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2 time exclusive)

Activision
Super Mario Bros 3. (NES)
Tetris (GB)

Namco
Halo: Combat Evolved (XBOX time exclusive)
Tecmo Super Bowl (NES)

[Brian Fein]

what does "time exclusive" mean?  Vice City is available for PC and XBOX

[Dave Gray]

what does "time exclusive" mean? Vice City is available for PC and XBOX

Yes, but PS2 had an agreement with Rockstar to release it on their system first.
XBOX had to wait a full year before the game was released for them.  The only reason for the wait was because of time exclusivity.

[Brian Fein]

OK, so "time exclusive" means that it was exclusive for some period of time?

I just have never heard that phrase before, looking for clarificaiton.

[Dave Gray]

OK, so "time exclusive" means that it was exclusive for some period of time?

Yeah, it's actually really common these days.  Back in the SEGA/Nintendo days, you'd just have exclusivity.  A third-party company would usually make a game for one machine or the other.  These days, there are too many systems to allot all of your resources to a release on a single console.  In order for the consoles to get the advantage of being the only system to carry it, they reach deals with the game makers for time exclusivity.

It was big with the GTA series (PS2 first), as well as Splinter Cell (XBOX first) and Resident Evil (GC first).

[DearbornDolfan]

Wait, what the hell? How did Goldeneye lose? Unless you hosed it by matching it up against GTA or Resident Evil...

[Dave Gray]

Wait, what the hell? How did Goldeneye lose? Unless you hosed it by matching it up against GTA or Resident Evil...

It faced Vice City and lost pretty bad.

[Thundergod]

Wait, what the hell? How did Goldeneye lose? Unless you hosed it by matching it up against GTA or Resident Evil...

Dude,  anything would have gotten hosed eventually.  Halo won this whole thing as soon as it hit the list.  

[DearbornDolfan]

I know it was going to lose eventually, but I hardly think that you could call this bracket a proper guage of the popularity of video games when TMNT lasted longer than Goldeneye. Goldeneye was the flagship game for N64 and was always the most popular game for that console; the only thing that came close was Perfect Dark. TMNT was never anything special, there were any number of action/fighting games that were better on NES/SNES.