The FOFC video game character draft

[Calis]

No kidding, give us the teaser and then leave us hanging!

I declare shenanigans on his pick.

[Danny]

I actually wanted Mega Man, so Im having a tough time choosing now

[albionmoonlight]

I'm here 'till 7 EST, so if EE11 and Calis get in before that, I can get in tonight.

(If, however, they pick the two that I want, then I may need a little more time to think.)

[Danny]

Ill take Duke Nukem

[Danny]

Dola- Needed someone with some longevity and the original duke was one of the best games ever. Here's hoping the guy I want for round two falls to me.

[Vince]

This sucks, I can't even start thinking about my pick yet...we're not even out of round one yet.

[Maple Leafs]

Don't forget, if you know who you want but you're going to be away, PM me your pick.

You won't get to do a big dramatic speech, but you will help keep the draft moving along.

[Calis]

With the 9th pick in the FOFC Video Game Character draft, I will select…


….


....


Wait for it….


The Avatar
Ultima

Took a lot of deliberation to come to this one, and I had a lot of possible picks, but I think the series history speaks for itself. He’s done it all at one time or another, including being one of the forefathers of RPG’s as we know them. He's got the history, he's got the power, he's got the cool factor, I think he's a safe 1st round pick.

[k0ruptr]

BOOOO

we want dean houston

[Maple Leafs]

Avatar... interesting pick. He wasn't even on my radar, but it's a tough one to argue with.

[albionmoonlight]

There are three guys who I think are worthy of this pick. I am picking the one who might have lasted until round 10, but who is also the guy I most want on my team.

Let's enter the way-back machine:

Picture it--Friday night sitting at home, your buddy calls you up.

BUDDY: "Hey, meet me at [local bar]. We can play pong."

YOU: "Cool, I didn't know [local bar] got a ping-pong table."

BUDDY [chuckling knowingly]: "No man, it's this new thing they got where you play ping-pong on the TV!"

YOU: "What? No way!"

BUDDY [still chuckling]: "I swear, man--meet me there . . ."

And so an era is born. With the 10th Pick, we are going OLD SCHOOL and picking

PLAYER ONE FROM PONG (aka "The vertical line representing Player One in PONG").

[Desnudo]

He walks softly and carries a big stick. You may never see him, but you'll know he's been there. Without further adieu, I introduce my pick:

Solid Snake

[sterlingice]

Actually, albionmoonlight, we were talking about this in hattrick chat last night and we were trying to decide whether to pick the paddle or the ball from Pong so I don't think it's that far of a stretch. Certainly not the "sexiest" pick out there, but solid.

SI

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

He walks softly and carries a big stick. You may never see him, but you'll know he's been there. Without further adieu, I introduce my pick:

Solid Snake

Then i'm sure you'll get this:

The draft have started to move.

[Maple Leafs]

We're flying now.

Well, as always, the guy with the last pick in round one winds up missing out on the sure things, but does get a couple of decent picks to build the team around. With so much time before my next pick, now is not the time to fool around. It's like they say, you can't win your league in the first round, but you can lose it.

Time to go with a couple of franchise players, so to speak, who have sold a ton.

With pick 1.12 - Crash Bandicoot.
With pick 2.1 - Lara Croft.

Would have liked to have gone more old school but there's time for that later.

[sterlingice]

SI's Round 1 Analysis
Time for a Mel Kiper-esque look at the picks in round one. I like to think I have a pretty good eye to the historical in terms of video games and that's the lens through which I choose to view things. Sure, Tommy Vercetti and John Madden sold the most games last year but GTA has only been a solid series for 1 generation and Madden's games have cosmetic changes year after year so it's easy to argue not much changes under the hood of those. Inherently, I have a Nintendo bias- I think they do the best job of innovation and fun factor plus they have systems that span the longest period of time.

Since we have no criteria such as "that's a good pick for shortstop this late in the draft"- I'm left to judge these on my own nebulous criteria of noteriety, longevity, games, and miscellaneous. Feel free to lambast these ratings and correct the many mistakes I'll likely make along the way. These are done on the fly so that I don't sink too much time into it.

1- Vince - Mario
Notoriety: 10- Who doesn't know who mario is?
Longevity: 10- He spans more than 20 years and still sells.
Games: 10- He's been in a million games, some of which are the most possible of all time
Misc: 10- He's had cartoons and a pair of lackluster movies centered around him (The Wizard, aka Rain Man Plays SMB3: The Cinematic Experience) but other than that, well, he's freaking Mario, the icon of a Nintendo company full of icons.
Overall: 10- Really hard to argue with this pick at all. As close to a consensus #1 as there is.

2- cthomer5000 - Donkey Kong
Notoriety: 9- It would be really tough to find someone who doesn't know him.
Longevity: 10- He also has been around more than 20 years. Can't think of a DK game for Gamecube yet but there have been GBA ones.
Games: 10- First, DK, then DK Jr, DK III, and all sorts of things like DK Math. Not very complex games but fun, especially back in the day. Then DKC and lots of other games like Diddy Kong racing.
Misc: 7- Big bonus points for having Mario spawned from his series.
Overall: 9- Maybe a little bit of a stretch, but certainly top half of the first round material.

3- SirFozzie- Samus Aran (from Metroid)
Notoriety: 7- Any gamer knows who Samus is but there were even a few "who is that" in this thread.
Longevity: 9- Not nearly as long as the first couple, but still dates back to 1986.
Games: 10- Metroid is an all-time classic, Super Metroid is one of the best of the SNES, Metroid Prime is possibly the best game of this generation. Even the gameboy and GBA offerings are classics.
Misc: 5- A series more about quality than quantity. Every metroid game has been one of the best for the system.
Overall: 9- Again, maybe an early reach but still top 8 material.

4- Ramzavail - Pac Man
Notoriety: 10- Everyone knows him
Longevity: 8- Not many notable offerings of late, but he's still around.
Games: 7- Pac Man and Ms Pac Man earn all of the points here as Pac Man hasn't had a hit game in years. Even Pac Man 3D was of questionable quality.
Misc: 6- 80s retro, eat your heart out.
Overall: 10- He has his shortcomings, but is one of the strongest in the field. To get him at 4 is a steal.

5- Corbes - Link (from Zelda)
Notoriety: 9- I think at this point, only those living in a cave don't know who Link is. Still, there are some non-gamers out there who know Mario and Pac Man first.
Longevity: 9- Almost as long as Mario and still putting out top notch games
Games: 10- Some of the best games ever made. Zelda: LttP and OoT are two of the best games of all time. Zelda 2 is the only weak "link".
Misc: 10- So much critical acclaim, you could choke, well, a really large animal with it. Heck, SoulCaliberII sold best on the Gamecube (no, not PS2 or XBox) because of his presence.
Overall: 10- Best pick of the 1st round, hands down.

6- ice4277 - Sonic The Hedgehog
Notoriety: 9- Most everyone knows who Sonic is
Longevity: 9- He dates back to the Sega Master System. That's a long time
Games: 7- The first time I played Sonic, I was blown away. Unfortunately, they need a new visionary to do their games now. The 3-D offerings aren't nearly as good because speed is tough to do in 3-D: people just don't think that fast. I would love someone to bring something revolutionary and new to this franchise.
Misc: 10- He's Sega's mascot even if they've been a little down on their luck of late
Overall: 9- Very solid. It was either Sonic or Mega Man here and I can't argue with either pick.

7- TargetPractice6 - MegaMan
Notoriety: 9- Like the previous picks, most people know of the Blue Bomber
Longevity: 9- From the NES days all the ways until now
Games: 10- First classic sidescrollers (I think 3 is the best) and now they've broken into the addictive handheld game market.
Misc: 6- Blue keeps reinventing himself but he's due for a 3-D makeover ala Metroid.
Overall: 10- I know TP wanted to go for Solid Snake but that would have been a stretch at this point. Mega Man was the only one who could have gone here.

8- EagleEye11 - Duke Nukem
Notoriety: 7- The first character who doesn't really have that massive appeal outside of the gaming sphere. Still, any gamer knows who he is.
Longevity: 8- Back from the day when entire games fit on one floppy. Unfortunately, his games are few and far between
Games: 6- The original scrollers were good. 3-D was pretty good, but took too long to come out. The current one is nothing more than vaporware right now.
Misc: 8- He's got some great lines and great attitude.
Overall: 8- Hard pick after all the easy guys were gone. A lack of games really hurts Duke.

9- Calis - The Avatar (Ultima)
Notoriety: 5- Certainly not the most popular character to fly off the boards in the first round
Longevity: 9- Ultima also dates back to the days of floppies and is still around.
Games: 9- How many roman numerals are they up to? Still, a lot of those start to fade together as a lot were more sequels than actual innovaton. Speaking of innovation, there was a little thing called UO which created MMORPGs.
Misc: 8- Big bonus points for UO and the creation of a hugely popular genre.
Overall: 5- Hm... the Ultima series is one of the tops in all of gaming (I think it goes a notch below Final Fantasy and on par with series like Dragon Warrior) but the character isn't a big name at all.

10- albionmoonlight - The vertical line representing Player One in Pong
Notoriety: 9- I struggled with this score. It was one of those that was either a "1" or a "10" kind of thing. In the end, I went with 9 because I think everyone knows Pong and this is part of the game
Longevity: 3- Well, it was a one hit wonder but you can still find Pong ripoffs sitting around.
Games: 7- Again, only one game but that was such a huge game...
Misc: 10- More or less credited with creating the video game genre. That's massive bonus points.
Overall: 8- Again, the toughest pick to rate, but, it gets the benefit of the doubt.

11- Desnudo - Solid Snake (Metal Gear)
Notoriety: 6- Some casual gamers will and some won't know who this is.
Longevity: 7- He dates back to the Commodore 64, believe it or not but his popularity has been punctuated.
Games: 7- Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge were nothing special- fun but so were a lot of NES games. Not an A or even B level game there. Same with the gameboy version. He really hit his stride in Metal Gear Solid, system seller for the PSX. MGS2 took a step back in a lot of people's eyes.
Misc: 7- Best game of the PSX. However, a lot of forgettable outings. MGS2 was pretty good and MGS:TS looks great for the Gamecube. Let's see where this franchise is in 10 years.
Overall: 8- We've hit the rough spot of picking. Big name these days but he's going to have to keep it up for more than a couple of years to show me something.

12- Maple Leafs - Crash Bandicoot
Notoriety: 6- Closest thing to a mascot that Playstation has. Then again, they're so 3rd party dependent that they don't have a strong stable of mascots like M has.
Longevity: 5- Only goes back to the Playstation.
Games: 7- The standard platformer games were pretty good and racing wasn't a bad outing.
Misc: 6- Gotta admire (or wretch) that Sony is trying to shoehorn him into as many genres as possible (Crash Team Racing, Crash Bash).
Overall: 6- I think this is a pretty big stretch. He's a round 2 or 3 guy but not round 1. Thankfully, pick 2.1 more than makes up for it

Closing Comments
Some interesting picks but most went by the book. I had 3 gaming icons and they went 1, 4, and 5 and then the other in the top 7 were in my category of "lesser gaming icons". After the easy picks were gone, things got more interesting. The Avatar wasn't anywhere near my list, tho, after looking at it, it makes sense as much as some of my 2nd and 3rd round picks do. We're going to see a lot more picks like that in the next few rounds- all the gaming icons are gone. However, we will start to see some characters from ensemble casts show up on there. Who do you pick from say, Final Fantasy or Pokemon? The individual characters aren't as well known but the games certainly are. Also, this is where the second tier of "icons" go- the Kirbys of the world (I'm trying to refrain from naming too many future picks). Later, after about the 3rd and 4th round, we're going to see who is "neo-playstation" and who is "old school". Right now we're in that part of the fantasy baseball draft where there are a lot of solid picks but no standouts- you draft for "need".

Biggest Steal: Link- A top 3 pick plucked at 5. Same with Pac-Man at #4.
Biggest Stretch: The Avatar- No real stretches this round. Crash Bandicoot is the other that comes to mind.
Should Have Gone: Lara Croft- The biggest b-- name in gaming still left. Even casual fans know who this is. After the big 7 went, I kept waiting for her to go.

SI

[cthomer5000]

great pickup in Croft. Clearly the steal of the draft so far. Something tells me both team morale and "level of distraction" will be at an all-time high on your aquad.

[corbes]

I thought Lara Croft was a lock at 6....nice pickup at 2(1).

She does have movies made about her...that's some pull right there.

I'm a big fan of the Player 1 From Pong selection. We'd none of us be here if it wasn't for him...

[sterlingice]

Hm.. I'm trying to rate the video game picks and these are the ratings I have sitting around. Any quick suggestions to add or tweak:

noteriety
longevity
innovation
depth

SI

[corbes]

Oh, I also like the Ultima pick. Seven (more?) games and the one-time largest online world... definite 1st round material

[Vince]

A couple of picks I'm not sure of, but for the most part a solid round one. I think the real steal is Pac-Man...I thought for sure he was top 3 caliber.

As for the questionable selections...there aren't really many. I think some people went a little early (The Avatar, Crash Bandicoot), but they're tough to argue against as good picks. I'm really interested to see how the rest of this shapes up

[Maple Leafs]

Crash was a little iffy, but you have to keep in mind that he's one of the few video game characters who's managed to spin off successful franchises in three different genres (platform, racing and party). Who else can you say that about? Mario, but he may be the only one.

[Desnudo]

He swings a mean bat, defined a new genre of games, and created a lack of respect for authority figures all over America. The man you go to when you need something done and done right:

Tommy Vercetti, Grand Theft Auto Series

[TargetPractice6]

Was he in another game besides Vice City?

[TargetPractice6]

Oh crap just noticed you took Snake! I was hoping he'd be around for my round 2 pick.

Edit: Can I still take Pliskin?

[Calis]

Originally Posted by TargetPractice6

Was he in another game besides Vice City?

Pretty sure he was the main guy in GTA3 also..not 100% sure on that though, but pretty sure.

[TargetPractice6]

I always just called him GTA Guy sicne they never actually said his name in GTA3...

[Maple Leafs]

Looks like we may be done for the night. Time limts come back into effect tomorrow.

Remember, PM your picks if you'll be away. Even if you only send one or two names, the odds are decent that you'll get your guy.

If you take too long to make your pick, Fargo picks for you!

[Racer]

I'm surprised no one has picked Bowser yet. He's probably the most well-known video game villain ever. He's go to be late first round material.

[Ramzavail]

People just have a hard time listening - why give away good answers like this?

Nobody cares about what you think. Keep it to yourself.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Ramzavail

People just have a hard time listening - why give away good answers like this?

Nobody cares about what you think. Keep it to yourself.

Actually, since this isn't a baseball draft or something quantifiable, it's completely about what everyone thinks. The only one who really cares is that one guy (every league has one or two) at fantasy drafts who tries to rush everyone else into making a hasty pick so his guy drops. And, really, no one likes that guy.

Anyways, my round 1 analysis is up:
http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/for...800#post361800

SI

[Ramzavail]

I just don't understand why statements like this have to be made though...

I'm surprised no one has picked Bowser yet. He's probably the most well-known video game villain ever. He's go to be late first round material.

Everybody is trying to get an edge and think of good characters before others do - if all the good characters are plasted all over this thread, then it loses it's fun - IMO

[FargoFreez aka fof playa]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

If you take too long to make your pick, Fargo picks for you!

And that's a threat!!!

Hmmm..who's still out there? Bomberman.

[k0ruptr]

there are some good ones still out there. looking forward to the rest of the 2nd round.

[Ramzavail]

Originally Posted by FargoFreez aka fof playa

Hmmm..who's still out there? Bomberman.

Nobody listens.

[Sun Tzu]

All you gotta say is "earmuffs"

[FargoFreez aka fof playa]

Originally Posted by Ramzavail

Nobody listens.

And you are?...

[albionmoonlight]

Let's keep it old school. One of the only characters worthy of his own Seinfeld episode.

FROGGER.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by Sun Tzu

All you gotta say is "earmuffs"

Princess Leia?

And damn, I was hoping Frogger would drop to my third pick.

[FargoFreez aka fof playa]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Some suggested reading (tho, keep in mind that GameFAQs is heavily RPG influenced).

hxxp://www.gamefaqs.com/features/contest/c02sumbracket.html
hxxp://www.gamefaqs.com/features/contest/c03sumbracket.html

SI

Just to give these links a little bumpy-bump. Ryu, Crono, Sephiroth..just a bunch of them.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Let's keep it old school. One of the only characters worthy of his own Seinfeld episode.

FROGGER.

Very nice pick.

[Calis]

Really like the Frogger pick actually, completely forgot about that one.

Good pick.

Didn't expect to make my 2nd pick so soon, but I'm here. I'll have to ponder for a few, but I'll go ahead and toss up my pick tonight.

[Calis]

Dola,

This was a VERY tough pick. I actually had a couple other characters rated above this one, but I think they have a better chance of being around when I pick again, so I'll wait.

With the 16th pick of the FOFC Video Game Character Draft I select....

Little Mac
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out

Now, this one is a bit questionable just because it's resting his reputation solely off of one game. Is there another single game character who is so well known and admired though? Punch-Out was the NES, pure and simple. It stands up right alongside the Mario Brothers games in my books as the top of the NES's heap. It's been what, 15-16 years since this game came out? What kid doesn't remember Little Mac after all this time? That's something there!

I hope this will help me regain some credibility after my "questionable" Avatar pick in the 1st. Looking back that probably was a bad pick, as he's really not what stands out in the series, but Ultima deserved to be here somewhere, so I'll be the scapegoat.

[Sun Tzu]

I like the pick a lot, and to be honest it hadn't even crossed my mind. However now it looks like a brilliant pick.

Good show I say. rah rah

[Barkeep49]

I had LIttle Mac down as a sleeper. Might be just a tad early, but I applaud this pick.

[albionmoonlight]

I had actually typed in the Little Mac pick and was ready to hit send when Frogger popped into my head. I even briefly thought about Mac in the first round. You really want a scrappy son of a bitch like that on your side. Great pick.

[Barkeep49]

I think picking Frogger ahead of Little Mac was a good choice.

[Ramzavail]

Originally Posted by FargoFreez aka fof playa

And you are?...

I am one of the people participating in this draft, you are not.

I would prefer you and all the rest of the people to stop giving out their 2 cents of why 'such and such' hasn't be chosen yet?

I have said this now - 3 times.

[albionmoonlight]

I agree with Ramzavail.

[Sun Tzu]

Ramzavail, I have two words for you my friend.

Waffle. Iron.