He's almost a villian in my eyes, eternally taunting my lousy shooting skills. :(

He definitely wasn't Man's Best Friend in that game.

I was one of those peoplet hat put the gun right next to the TV. I'm a cheater, I know. :D

When I first skimmed this, I read it as "one of those puppet hats..."

And I don't know why, but for some reason I think "puppet hat" is just a fantastic insult. I'm going to start using it.

Target has a 'buy one get one free' on those when you purchase an asshat at the same time.

I dub thee "Ass Puppet".

That sounds like it would hurt :redface:

I know Foz is pretty busy these days, so I've made a pick for him based on an old list he sent.

Foz takes The Defender, from Defender. (Edit: Oops. Already gone)

Ramzavail is up... right now the odds of this draft being completed are running at about 4-1.

Didnt he choose the Defender in the 7th round?

Indeed he did. In that case, I have no more picks left for him.

I wouldn't count on him making frequent forum visits, so feel free to move on without him for now. He may drop by this afternoon after work and make a pick, but I doubt at this stage that anyone is going to be targetting the same characters.

And once again, please, please send me your picks in advance if you can. Right now I have picks from Corbes and TargetPractice, and that's it. There's no reason it should take two weeks to do a round and a half when everyone is picking sleepers.

Time to go a bit retro again...

The Altered Beast (from the game Altered Beast)

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!!!!!

Thats better.

My favorite car and character in the game that I probably spend the most time playing ever (More than any other Final Fantasy) - F-Zero SNES

Captain Falcon - F-Zero series, Super Smash Bros. series

i'll make my pick...

...in one second

I'll take The Commando from the game of the same name.

Has anyone selected the guy from Section Z yet. Not that I think that would be a good pick, but I think I may be the only person in the world to have purchased that game.

Power up!!!

Classic game...

Piggybacking onto Corbes' pick, I choose:

The Commando (Command and Conquer)

One of the very few memorable individual characters from the first game, and just about the only one you really cared not to get killed. Bonus points for being in the game that jumpstarted an entire genre.

In a really odd twist, Target's pre-sent pick was:

The Bionic Commando

Seriously. I'm not making that up. Talk about going commando.

(I have no idea who that is, by the way, is it the same guy as one of the previous two commandos?)

No, Bionic Commando was from an arcade-turned-NES side-scroller that involved a guy with a telescoping arm. While The Commando was an Ikari-Warriors style overhead view scroller.

SI

Ikari-Warriors - thats one helluva reference - I loved that game.

OK, then Eagle Eye is up.

Eagle, which Commando should I put you down for?

We are proud to select the best character from the best ever real time strategy game. I select Kerrigan from Starcraft.

good pick.

I'm going to go ahead and go with the main character in what is probably the best or at worst 2nd best RPG of all time in my book. Definitely one of the best endings in the history of gaming as well.

The Vault Dweller
Fallout

Not a whole lot more to be said. I mean, it's Fallout!

good pick - although not too many people have heard of this game.

Certainly I have and wasted alot of time with Fallout Tactics as well.

I needed a bit more muscle on the team to complement George. When this game came out, I was still young enough to find the pun in his name the height of sophisticated comedy. Weighing in at 237 pounds with a record of 33 wins, 2 losses, and 24 Knock Outs, the one and only



Soda Popinski

I love that name. For my selection, tossing long bombs and frustrating defenses for years:

The Trebuchet, Age of Empires/Mythology series

Damn, my last two picks. Time to fill out the roster with some size and toughness.

Ninth round pick:
OK, it's yet another attempt to feed off the popularity of a great game without a real lead character. So sue me. At least this time I didn't pick an inanimate object. This guy was pretty bad ass and could do a lot of damage. Nothing like seeing hours of hard work go down the tube when he showed up and stomped a mudhole in everything. I still hate him to this day.

My ninth round pick: The Giant Lizard from Sim City

Tenth round pick:
We've left a major category of video/computer game characters untouched. Specifically, a type of boss character that's often overlooked. It's the "Foozle the Evil Wizard" character: that generic, obligatory bad guy in every old-school RPG who builds a dungeon, sends his minions after you, and then fights you in the final battle.

So which one to choose... I thought about Mangar form Bard's Tale and briefly considered someone from the Arena series. But in the end I settled on a personal favorite, from one of the most ground-breaking titles of all time. He was tough to fight, he had a pet dragon, and they ripped off his look for the Witch King in Lord of the Rings. That's an impressive resume.

My tenth and final pick: Lord Chaos, from Dungeon Master

too bad they couldn't have left him as Vodka Drunkenski from the aracade version. :(

Still, I love how his sayings overtly referenced drinking. Not the toughest fighter in the game, but good pick.

"After you lose, we'll drink to your health! Ha, ha, ha!"

My last pick is one for a game that didn't exactly explode in popularity, but definitely had a niche as one of the first successful MMPORGs:

Asheron, Asheron's Call

"I drink to prepare for a fight. Tonight, I am very prepared!"

Albino sent in a pick:

He selects Clyde from Pac Man.

I don't have the motivation to put much thought into this anymore, but when the whole Commando craze went down it triggered some memories of another character.

I will select the man who propelled John Carmack's and sexy bitch John Romero's careers into the limelight. The one and only....

Commander Keen

Think this started the whole shareware craze as well, and it was a pretty damn fun game to boot. No clue how many they ended up making, 7 or so I think. Anyway, brought the side scroller to the PC.

I'm done..phew, what a relief actually. Through all the trials and tribulations, we've almost finished this thing, and can let it fade into oblivion finally. :)

I will use my final pick to select the villian from perhaps the greatest video game franchise ever.

I select Ganondorf

I see some guys who should have left the board long ago being picked now: Dr Wily, Ganon, and Captain Falcon. I was wondering when any of those guys would get picked.

SI

Just to comment on Clyde as a pick--

Much like when I picked the Princess, I wanted to get a recognizable character from a legendary game in my stable. Non gamers who have no idea who 95% of the characters on this list are will recognize the ghost from Pac-Man (and may even remember that the last one was named Clyde).

Pardon my stupidity, but...

I thought the ghosts were Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Sue.

I certainly do not remember anyone named Clyde.

Never heard of Sue...you have some sort of ghost fetish?

After some quick research:

Clyde was the last ghost in Pac Man
Sue was the last ghost in Ms. Pac Man

Oh, I just remembered LInky, Tinky and Stinky

Ah! That was it! I was wondering this, too, because I remember Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde.

SI

Kind of makes you wonder if Clyde is a good pick, though. If he was cut from the roster before the sequel, that might tell you something... I hear he was a lockerroom cancer.

I think by the time Ms Pac Man came out Clyde had retired and was in broadcasting...

. . . then there was that whole drug cartel/power pellet smuggling scandal in the late 80's in which Clyde was involved. He was last spotted in 1997 living in hiding in Argentina.

When is the next pick due. Let's finish this draft up right (or put it out of its misery depending on your point of view).

TargetPractice is up. He's been sending picks, but they've all been taken.

I'm here. Pick in a little while. Eating dinner at the moment.

My next pick comes from one of my favorite games of all time. It really wasn't that widely played, but I liked it so much I have to pick a character from it.

So with my final pick I'll take....

Ramza Beoulve, Final Fantasy Tactics

I was thinking about picking the Cid of this game, which is why I contested Vince's pick of all the Cids. :D However, you don't get or even meet him until later in the game. So I figured I'd take the main character.

Heh. Not sure that Ramzavail will be too pleased with that pick there, TP.

For my final pick, there were a couple characters I was tossing around in my head from games that I am particularly fond of. However, when it came down to it, I felt the need to take a character who has taken on a legendary status amongst a certain group of gamers (this group). With my final pick, I select:

Dean Houston (FOF)

No need to explain any more, really.

Can sombody please pick up Max Payne !!!

Who's Dean Houston?

dola-

is that the referee who tells you your score at the end of the year?

See http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/for...threadid=17162

I know, I know. I was being a jackass. Sorry. It's not even 8:00am and I'm already being a jackass.... sigh... ;)

I cannot believe it.

For weeks, my 10th round pick was scheduled for Ramza. I would have never figured somebody would have picked him.

Great pick. Good for you.

I've got adventure: Link

I've got news: The Paperboy

I've got the sexiest pair in the draft: Leisure Suit Larry & Ms. Pacman

I've got old school toughness: Kung Fu and Commando.

I've got a non-character from a good game: Player 1 From Pole Position.

I've got villians: The Centipede, and Wario.

I need a little more new school, and maybe a little more toughness, so I go with:

Raiden, my favorite character from Mortal Kombat.

Hmm... we said no characters based on real life people. I thought it was common knowledge that Houston was based on the life of John Wayne Gacy?

You may have me on a technicality :redface:

Since my pick was stripped from me by TP - I will go with a player from one of the most customizable baseball games ever created and a game that was so far ahead of it's time it is unbelieveable. I will choose the best hitter in the game...

Babe from the American Dreams in Baseball Stars

I cannot believe it. I figured that no one...NO ONE would take that pick. So obscure, yet so good. Amazing pick, Ramzavail. Now I have to find someone else :(

TP made me do it! ;)

Now I'm just gonna have to get crazy...

FOr my last pick, I'm going to poick a Final Fantasy staple. I think this out paces the Cid thing, because if you ask a lot of people "what character do you normally see in every Final Fantasy game".. They won't say Cid, they'll go for the character who's best line is "WARK!!"

Chocobo!!!

(I still wish I had an old graphic someone made, of a Moogle dressed up like Samuel L Jackson from Pulp Fiction, and the tagline: "Kupo, MotherF**ker!"

Good one, :p

OK. We need a chick and this is one of the best and most original games of the last 10 years.


edit: I was incredibly tempted to take the DJ of Jet Set Radio. That guy was great.

Which one?

The Yellow One. (ie standard Chocobo)

I thought he was asking which specific one. It seemed to me he was getting at this rule: "4. You're drafting specific characters, not general types. Blinky from Pac Man is OK. "Ghosts" in general are not."

Sorry, Ramzavail. I would have taken Orlandu or Delita, but I had to go for the main character. :)

It is ok - it was a good pick.

Those were also two great characters - but you have to go with the main character, I understand.

Just like Tennis Mario and Super Mario and Super Smash Bros Mario are the same, the Yellow Chocobo should be the same

Chocobos are fairly common animals in Final Fantasy though. Not really a specific person like Mario.

Dola,

Whoa that was my 1,000th post!

Can you say, RC Pro AM! Woot...

I hinted it earlier a few pages back, but nobody seemed to want the pick... Someone actually messaged me that they knew the answer, but already had a racing character.

Yeah, I thought Chocobos were general characters, not specific ones. Like taking "cars" in Frogger.

Unless there was a specific one named "Chocobo" in one of the games. I can't claim to be an expert.

Fine.. The Yellow Chocobo from FFVII.

This whole exchange is funny for those of us who know nothing about Final Fantasy.

I thought he was a wrestler. :D

I gather that there's some animal named a Chuck-a-bo, (as in, to throw a person named "Bo"), which may or may not be a specific animal or a larger species of animals, whose distress call is "WARK".

A Chocobo (pronounced CHOE-co-bo) is a two-legged, ostrich like animal in the FInal Fantasy series. It's main job is to move your party around faster then they can normally walk.. Plus look cute.

They are afraid of anything they're not familiar with, so when you start a battle, the Chocobo gets scared and runs off.

Chocobos are usually yellow, but there are green, red and black ones too, that can climb mountains, or swim seas...

Here's a Chocobo


Since, as animals, they don't speak, the sound that comes out "Wark"

Thats correct. Thats a chocobo.

RC Pro AM - Wouldnt be a good pick - what would you take? a green truck?
Max Payne - isnt a great pick either - his games were average at best.

Ok, I've had more time than I should have to consider this pick...it's the last one in the entire draft. I've got a ton of ways I could go with this still, but here's how it went down.

Max Payne, while a viable character in one of the best games of the last few years (sorry Ramzavail, I disagree heartily that his first venture was aveage at best), just wasn't the player we were looking for. One game, with a sequel that the jury is still out on, was just not enough for our team at this point.



The Black Mage from Final Fantasy I was an early favorite to be my last round sleeper, but the RPG presence in this draft has been underappreciated, and we decided late to go in a different direction.

The Tank from Blaster Master was one of my favorite cool gizmos growing up, and managed to make its way to Game Boy and even a sequel on the PlayStation (I didn't know this either). However, it just didn't have the publicity that we wanted.


Diablo (from Diablo II) was a really cool bad guy, and my team is notably lacking in the bad guy category...but I just couldn't pull the trigger.


In the end, we went with a character from the game I probably spent more single-player time on than any other game, ever. With unlimited potential and incredible versatility, this guy was the linch-pin for one of the greatest games of all time. It all began with him. With the final pick in the draft, I select...


The Settler from Sid Meier's Civilization.

Would this brave explorer (group of explorers) be the foundation of one of your greatest cities? Or would he build the roads that would later lead your armies to speedy victories over your adversaries? I was certain from the beginning of the draft that I wanted one of my sleeper picks to be a unit from Civ, but I was torn for the longest time on which unit I would make it. Would it be the lowly Warrior? Or the popular Legion? Perhaps the Phalanx, the best really early unit...in the end, I decided that the building block of civilization had to be the representative.

I wanted to represent this pick with a picture of the old covered wagon that was the settler from the original, but I can't find any darned pics of it on the web. Ah well....

So, my team in it's entirety -

Mario
Simon Belmont (Castlevania)
Master Chief (Halo)
Sub Zero (Mortal Combat)
Billy Lee (Double Dragon)
Joe Musashi (Shinobi)
The Guy on the Bike (Excitebike)
Cid (Final Fantasy IV)
Erdrick (Dragon Warrior)
The Settler (Sid Meier's Civilization)

I'm pretty happy with that. I've got the most popular video game character of all time, three martial artists, one Airship mechanic, a bionically engineered guy who fought off an entire race of aliens single-handedly (Master Chief), Dracula's most famous foe (arguably), a long dead ancient Dragon Warrior, and the foundation of Civilization as we know it. Not bad :)

Were you guys really so hard up for draft choices that characters like Revolver Ocelot, Tails, Knuckles, Mother Brain, Kid Chameleon, or even some more contemporary characters like Klonoa, Viewtiful Joe, Ninja (from I-Ninja), couldn't find a home? Princess Zelda gets no love? As for evil badguys...where's Dr. Robotnik?

I mean, I feel the love for Tetris - goodness knows I play that game on my GBA SP on a nightly basis - but we're talking about an industry with twenty years of history to draw upon, and that's just since the NES rose to power in late '84, and THAT'S just console gaming. Never mind the arcade realm or the world of PC gaming.

Twenty years of gaming, and you guys couldn't find 120 characters without resorting to inanimate objects?

C'mon. I know gaming is franchise-happy, but surely, with as many companies as there are producing games, there are six characters a year memorable enough to warrant inclusion ahead of the 'player one paddle from Pong.'

Just my two cents on what was otherwise an enjoyable thread to read. Great job for the most part. It's just those head-scratchers that have me in this 'what the fuck?' mood.

Sack, don't be hatin'

You kindof stole my thunder there as I was going to make a team of "non-drafted" people and you named 3 of mine (Mother Brain, Zelda, and Dr Robotnik).

SI

Maybe we should do a draft for non-drafted characters ;)

Should I be embarassed to admit that I'm stunned nobody picked Parappa the Rappa?

No - In every draft there are going snubs - I don't think anybody that Sack mentioned were so obviously that we were boneheads not too choose.

I think if we would have chosen the guys Sack mentioned - he would have said at the end of the draft - how could somebody not pick anything from the game Pong!!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? That game has been around for 4 decades - blah blah blah. IE: A no-win situation.

IF I-Ninja was chosen - I would have laughed - that game is pathetic.

Parappa the Rapper would have been a good pick - Parappa 1 was classic, Parappa 2 stunk - but I wouldn't say "goddamn how could we forget about him?"

I thought about taking Princess Zelda, but if Zelda were safe and on my team, she would never fall into the evil clutches of others, and Link would be out of work, and get old and lazy.

I had to pick between the Metroid and Mother Brain and went with the Metroid because of the name of the game.

I should have gotten Princess Zelda--it would have fit with my pick of the Mario Princess, Clyde, and the Metroid.

I never thought of "player one in pong" as an inatimate object. I thought of it as a representation of a person at a ping-pong table. Different from the straight line in Tetris.

Overall--good draft. I'm waiting to hear other commentary on it.

I compiled the teams. I decided to post it in a new thread so that more people would see it.

dola-

After drafting Raiden in the 10th round, I want to cut him and sign Princess Zelda as an undrafted F.A.

(Looks around...)

So, uh, what do we do now?

An All time Sports player draft.

This thread sure was popular. It got more replies than any thread other than playoff hockey. It has more replies than any thread other than playoff hockey and more views than any thread other than playoff hockey, reference thread, and TPF thread.

All in all, I say that the draft is a success.

I think now we wait for the final SterlingIce review. At least, that is what I am doing.

The fun for me is in the doing. Thanks for putting it together Maple.