The FOFC video game character draft

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by ardent enthusiast

Can't believe I read through most of this just to see if I could find out who reported mckerney.

I had mild interest in this Sunday afternoon when we were all spitting out names in the HT chatroom.

Part of the fun of "drafts" is the cheering and jeering of draft picks...rooting for your guys to go. For those of you who don't like it...and I'm really trying to be sympathetic to your cause...man, what a bummer.

You've basically taken whatever fun I thought this would be out of it.

Don't worry; I won't check in here again. I'd hate to interrupt your important, private, draft.

Ardent, if you read the football picks draft, you'll notice no one mentions names before they are picked out of respect for the participants. I don't see why this should be any different.

[corbes]

I just like it when we start a new page, because then my dinky browser can load the page in less than a billion seconds.

[ice4277]

Damn y'all and your Monkey Island and Ninja Gaiden picks!

[ice4277]

Sticking with the theme of old-school video games, my fourth pick will be the:

Spacecraft from Galaga

Galaga is about as old-school a shooter as you will find, and for my money, is still just as enjoyable as any shooter that has come out since. Perhaps this is becoming a bit of a forgotten genre, but in its day, Galaga enjoyed as much success as many of the games already mentioned here. The craft also was a groundbreaker, leading the way in aspects such as power-ups and customization. (Who didn't think that joining two ships together was badass?)

[Sun Tzu]

Nice pick ice. I remember playing Galaga with my cousins as a kid for hours on end, seeing who could get the highest score.

[corbes]

Wow, ice. You snarked me by one pick. Bastard.

I'm going for pure name recognition here with:

The Paperboy

Thank you.

[mauchow]

Paper Boy... Excellent dude.

[TargetPractice6]

Oh man I forgot about the paperboy! Hah that brings back memories. I like that pick

I have a speial pick I'm saving for the later rounds. I just hope nobody gets it in the mean time.

[Maple Leafs]

I'm loving that Paperboy pick. I'm not sure if it's a great pick for this draft, since he was only really in one game and didn't have any mainstream impact, but man I used to love that game.

[corbes]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

I'm loving that Paperboy pick. I'm not sure if it's a great pick for this draft, since he was only really in one game and didn't have any mainstream impact, but man I used to love that game.

The rules change as we see fit. I think, "I used to love that game" counts as much as any other criteria.

Anyhoo, I bet the Paperboy has wide ranging name appeal. He's been in every arcade in America...

[Sun Tzu]

I tried playing paperboy again about a month ago...man that game was HARD. Seriously fire up you're NES emulator and play paperboy.

[corbes]

Originally Posted by Sun Tzu

I tried playing paperboy again about a month ago...man that game was HARD. Seriously fire up you're NES emulator and play paperboy.

It's not nearly as much fun without the bike handles from the arcade version...

[Ramzavail]

The quintessential side-scrolling shooter with fantastic action and arguably the most famous and recited cheat code ever.

After alot of research by trying to figure out this characters name , I think I have finally found it...although I am not 100% sure it is correct.

So we can just use the main character from Contra

or Bill "Mag Dog" Rizer from Contra

http://www.classicgaming.com/contra/...contraname.htm

As this website says 'two heroes' Bill "Mag Dog" Rizer and Lance "Scorpian" Bean. Apparently, player 1 and player 2.

[cthomer5000]

you had to love that Konami secret code that was used on multiple games.

[korme]

Fitting for this thread:



Awesome.

[Easy Mac]

We know thats not Shorty, that picture has chest hair.

and contra: up up down down left right left right b a select start... Man that was great and far harder to do on a keyboard for some reason.

[Calis]

I dunno, a Megaman tattoo on your chest?

That's a bit frightening.

What's up with his eye also, like a mole there or something? It's freaking me out.

Well done tattoo if nothing else. I'm sure the chicks dig it.

[korme]

Yeah it is rather large but browsing waferbaby I come to find this picture and I thought of this thread.

I love you all.

[korme]

Even you Maple.

Even you.

[Vince]

TP, you really suck. He was definitely the guy I was hoping would last until my next pick. Excellent pick.

As was Guybrush Threepwood, another darkhorse candidate for my next pick.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

Ardent, if you read the football picks draft, you'll notice no one mentions names before they are picked out of respect for the participants. I don't see why this should be any different.

Johny U and Sammy Baugh what?

[BishopMVP]

Guess who's back, back, back again? Guess who's back, back, back. Tell a friend.

And Baugh was supposed to be my 6th round steal.

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by corbes

Wow, ice. You snarked me by one pick. Bastard.

Thats ok, I was going to use the Paperboy in a later round, so we're even

[SirFozzie]

He only spoke five or six phrases, "Beware, I Live!" and "I HUNGER!" amongst them, but no one who's ever played this 80's arcade game will forget them.

My pick: SINISTAR (from the Sinistar Arcade Game)

[sterlingice]

SI's Round 3 Analysis
Ok, after all the controversy, this is the gentler, tamer version of the review, mostly spoiler free. Lots of older guys started flying off the boards- I even had to go do some homework. I'm only 24 so I missed the genesis of gaming and thus, putting some of them in perspective will be a bit off.

1- Vince - Master Chief (Halo)
Notoriety: 5- The somewhat nondescript main character from a big game.
Longevity: 1- One hit wonder, so far. All but guaranteed to have a second hit tho he hasn't been around long.
Games: 9- Small body of work but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. Is Halo 2 going to be more of the same or a big improvement on the first?
Misc: 7- Halo's one of only three XBox A Games to date and the one that gave them legs early.
Overall: 5- In 10 years, this pick may be much higher but the future of gaming is really uncertain.

2- cthomer5000 - Luigi
Notoriety: 8- Second fiddle to his brother, but still well known by non-gamers.
Longevity: 9- He doesn't quite go back as far as Mario's Donkey Kong but Mario Bros is pretty old.
Games: 7- The Mario games are classic but Luigi has almost always been runner up. Luigi's Mansion was a pedestrian outing but he did finally get to share the marquee this past year in the excellent Superstar Saga for GBA.
Misc: 3- Hmm... John Leguizamo. I think we'd best be moving along.
Overall: 7- If you're picking a "sidekick", the taller thinner Mario brother is a good place to start.

3- SirFozzie - King Bowser
Notoriety: 8- The first villain is a well known one. You know, I can't think of any video game villains more well known off the top of my head. Many movies focus on bad guys (Hannibal Lechter or The Terminator) but not many video games give you a shot to *be* the bad guy.
Longevity: 9- Super Mario Brothers came out in 1985 and he's still around.
Games: 7- Never the star, but always there in some of the biggest games of all time (SMB3 and SM64, in particular).
Misc: 5- Two Mario picks in a row. I really like Dennis Hopper as an insane villain.
Overall: 7- I like the villain angle. This is the second Mario pick in a row, tho.

4- Ramzavail - Yoshi
Notoriety: 7- Slightly less well known than Luigi and Bowser since he hasn't been around as long.
Longevity: 8- Dates back to 1989 and Super Mario World.
Games: 8- Doesn't have SMB, SMB2, and SMB3 to his credit like the others, but SMW and SM64 are still classics. Plus, Yoshi's Cookie is a fun puzzle game and Yoshi's Island is an excellent platformer.
Misc: 5- Yoshi's Safari, well, it used the little known SNES light gun.
Overall: 7- It's a Mario run. All three get pretty much identical scores since they're all kindof co-stars.

5- Corbes - Ms. Pac Man
Notoriety: 9- Almost as popular as the original. Consider this a 9+
Longevity: 7- Been around almost as long as Pac Man and they have been packaged together ever since.
Games: 7- Many rate the Ms. game higher than the one from Mr. But like her male counterpart, not much notable of late.
Misc: 7- A little affirmative action going around. Larry-Ms. Pan Man synergy points?
Overall: 9- I think we'll be debating the merits of coattail picks long after the draft is done, but Ms. Pac Man is a big enough name in her own right.

6- ice4277 - Ken (Streetfighter)
Notoriety: 7- He and Ken are really co-stars of SF so they get the same score.
Longevity: 8- Ditto, what I said above.
Games: 7- This is getting repetitive, but, yeah, same as Ryu. Maybe as more people pick the same characters in
Misc: 10- I have been swayed by albionmoonlight's argument that if you have identical picks on the board and get one later than the other, then it shouldn't detract from the score- the bargain "price" more than cancels out the "originality".
Overall: 9- And, by that token, this is a bargain pick. There are very few identical guys out there in gaming, tho. Luigi still is second fiddle to Mario and was graded as such. Oh, and trying to pick just to get points from me is a bad idea- I'm such a moving target since I'm doing this off the top of my head so I'm sure someone will call me in the next few rounds on giving nearly identical characters different scores.

7- TargetPractice6 - Fox McCloud
Notoriety: 6- Big game, small character, again. A lot of those this round.
Longevity: 6- Goes back to 1993, the days of the middle SNES dev cycle.
Games: 7- Star Fox was a thing of beauty when first released and made him an icon and SF64 helped further that reputation. Unfortunately, SFA was Rare's last game with N while the company was falling apart and they just grafted a Star Fox license onto a Zelda-esque adventure game. He does get quite a few cameos tho, such as Super Smash Brothers.
Misc: 5- A word of caution: when you see me gush over a pick like this, you'll see how much of an N homer I am.
Overall: 9- I think this is a great pick. Despite his lack of games, he has been around long enough to become one of N's stable of video game icons, as evidenced by his presence in SSB.

8- EagleEye11 - Kirby
Notoriety: 9- *Girls* know who this character is. Not the biggest name among guys but one of only a few characters that a decent number of female games know. Wide appeal.
Longevity: 8- I didn't realize how much the NES and SNES dev cycles overlapped but, like Fox, Kirby hit the big time in 1993. That would be like releasing a Playstation game now and expecting it to sell well.
Games: 8- Kirby's Adventure is a classic NES game, Kibry Super Star for the SNES is in the top 10 for that system (tho the other two SNES Kirby games weren't as good) and the 2 1/2-D Kibry 64 game was underrated. His first Gamecube outing was mediocre (Air Ride).
Misc: 10- A couple of silly points for my inherent bias since she's my girlfriend's favorite character and one of my top picks in SSBM. The majority of these points come from the unique demographic spread.
Overall: 10- Another one of those 2nd tier icons who has a great pedigree with top games on 3 systems.

9- Calis - Pitfall Harry
Notoriety: 5- Pitfall was huge. I couldn't have told you the name of the main character until he was picked but that may just be my ignorance shining through.
Longevity: 9- He's been around forever. However, hasn't been in the spotlight since the original
Games: 6- I admit, I don't know much about this series. From what I can discern, there's the original classic, Pitfall II, The Mayan Adventure, and one's that's due out in the next month for PS2, Gamecube, and XBox. All of the points come from the initial classic as I can't find much about the others.
Misc: 6- If the upcoming game breathes life into the dormant series, this looks like a really good pick.
Overall: 6- Due to his long absence from the forefront, I'm not sure if there were many others rushing out to get him. A quality character to have in your stable but a little of a reach this early.

10- albionmoonlight - The Metroid
Notoriety: 7- Classic series named after them. I'm guessing there are quite a few people out there who think Metroid is the bounty hunter and not the enemies so I had to dock a point.
Longevity: 9- Like Samus, dates back to 1986.
Games: 10- Only 6 games across 5 systems, but all 6 are good including some 4 "top of system" caliber games (Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Prime).
Misc: 3- The metroids have multiplied and mutated like crazy- there's about a billion types of them now. Not the big baddie in all the metroid games, tho.
Overall: 5- Again, not sure it/they was/were flying off the board. Good series to have a character from, to be sure.

11- Desnudo - Q*Bert
Notoriety: 6- A familiar arcade character who has a "franchise" named for him.
Longevity: 8- See notes in "Overall". The arcade game came out in 1982.
Games: 9- It's an arcade classic.
Misc: 2- Like many of the others, I really sucked at this game. In case anyone has noticed, the Misc category really doesn't affect the overall score.
Overall: 7- It appears inconsistent that I can be a little lukewarm on Harry and a little more favorable about Q*Bert, but at least one other person claimed they were going to pick him and, on top of that, I think he was kept alive a little longer by remakes that were basically the original. There were Q*Bert games for the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision, NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Playstation, and Dreamcast- that's at least one every generation so someone must have been buying them.

12- Maple Leafs - The tank from space invaders
Notoriety: 7- A huge game, but a character who doesn't even have a name.
Longevity: 10- Some of the guys drafted have been around a long time. It trumps all but the Pong paddle with a 1978 debut. Jeez- I wasn't even born then. There really hasn't been a good remake- it's hard to "update" a classic that was oneof the first few games ever made.
Games: 10- It's dated, but literally hundreds of games owe their existence to Space Invaders.
Misc: 1- I've got to say it- I have a bias against these inanimate object picks. They just don't seem to be "pure" since they aren't really "characters" in my eyes.
Overall: 5- As I said, I was unduly harsh to the asteroids pick and this is the score I'd give it as well. Again, the inanimate object thing is getting in the way. The first time was novel but I'm finding it silly now. Others seem to disagree but this is my review so I get to make the comments here

Closing Comments
We had a run of Mario characters and then a run of old arcade characters. It's like we just had an outfield run after the quality guys at positions of scarcity were done then the relief pitcher run starter. We saw some "drafting for need" with some big name arcade guys going while some others went with "best athlete available" with lesser icons like Fox and Kirby. There are about 6 guys(/gals/things) I have on my list that I think will go pretty soon but beyond that, predictions are going to be nearly impossible as people start picking favorite characters and sleepers.

Biggest Steal: Kirby- I'm pretty sure putting anything else here would result in my death. I really like the Fox and Ms Pac Man picks, too.
Biggest Stretch: Master Chief- He runs the risk of being even less than an afterthought in a few years. Still, no big reaches. The Metroid pick would be bad if the series weren't called Metroid, but it is.
Should Have Gone: Priest Holmes- Showed us his injury trouble was behind him to set a TD record so he's gotta be consensus #1. Keep an eye out to how the Cheifs deal with John Tait this offseason as his departure could leave a huge hole in the offensive line. Aw, crap. Wrong draft.

SI

[Danny]

Brilliant round review SI .

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by EagleEye11

Brilliant round review SI .

Oh, you're just happy because I gave you a good score

Seriously, I just hope people are reading the reviews for fun. But I know it's hard to not look at your own score and temper your opinion towards everything else.

SI

[Danny]

Yeah, I enjoyed reading all of your reviews, even the one where I get a 3 (now a 5).

[ice4277]

I would have to agree, you reviews are definitely one of the reason I keep checking back on this thread every 20 minutes or so.

See, a Wings fan and an Avalanche fan can get along on some things

[Danny]

Bah, as a Kings fan, I hate both of your teams.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by ice4277

I would have to agree, you reviews are definitely one of the reason I keep checking back on this thread every 20 minutes or so.

See, a Wings fan and an Avalanche fan can get along on some things

Blech! Wings fan! Unfortunately, the Hawks haven't given me much to brag about since Thibault went down. Time to go check the daily futility meter: 6 wins in the 37 games since he's been gone. Now that's just ugly.

SI

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Blech! Wings fan! Unfortunately, the Hawks haven't given me much to brag about since Thibault went down. Time to go check the daily futility meter: 6 wins in the 37 games since he's been gone. Now that's just ugly.

SI

D'oh, forgot you were a Hawks fan, not a 'Lanche fan. Sorry 'bout that. You guys have definitely had your share of bad times. Personally, I hope the Hawks recover soon, it would be great to have a real Original Six rivalry to care about again.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by ice4277

D'oh, forgot you were a Hawks fan, not a 'Lanche fan. Sorry 'bout that. You guys have definitely had your share of bad times. Personally, I hope the Hawks recover soon, it would be great to have a real Original Six rivalry to care about again.

Yeah, it's rough being the little brother who likes to tag along but knows it's not the big brother. Still, we've played you guys good: 2-2-0-1 this season and a winning record last season. But that's because those games *are* our Stanley Cup.

SI

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Yeah, it's rough being the little brother who likes to tag along but knows it's not the big brother. Still, we've played you guys good: 2-2-0-1 this season and a winning record last season. But that's because those games *are* our Stanley Cup.

SI

Yeah, you guys have played us good this year and last. Some of the games have been pretty good too. But I hate the way the schedule is this year, they should have spread the games out a bit more.

[wig]

Has anyone taken the Dig-Dug guy yet?

[wig]

What about Spy Hunter?

[wig]

The guy from Tron?

You guys need new talent scouts

[Calis]

Great review SI.

Fun stuff to read, even though I respectfully disagree with the scoring on my Harry pick.

Good stuff though, keep it up.

[wig]

What about the guy in "Track and Field"? He was pretty funny looking during the long jump.

[wig]

oooohhh!!!

Robotron!

He was so bad-ass that he needed 2 joysticks

[Airhog]

I heart WIG

[cthomer5000]

Round 4 -
Bonk

As in Bonk's Asventure and the Turbo Grafx 16 platform. The first 16-bit platform. He outlived TurboGrafx - so he shows he's a multi-dimensional playa.

We were really looking for a hard-headed, meat-eating maniac as well.

[Danny]

Bonk is a solid choice.

[ice4277]

Ya, I forgot all about him. For that matter, I forgot all about the Turbografx 16.

[albionmoonlight]

My freshman roommate in college told me about the time that he won a TurboGrafx 16 when they first came out. He said he was really psyched until he noticed that no one made games for it.

[Calis]

I have to admit, Bonk is the first pick that I've had absolutely no clue who it is.

I hang my head in shame.

[wig]

The evil Sinistar was pretty bad ass.

He could bring some toughness to someone's team.

[wig]

Either Bub or Bob from Bubble-Bobble would be great off the bench.

Now would they be 2 different picks, or can you take them both at once?

[Axxon]

Would me posting anything possibly be considered shouting out possible future picks?

BTW, a lot of nice picks but for my money the steal so far has to be sinistar.

[Barkeep49]

Seems to me that this draft is too heavy on the Video Game side of things and there are some great Computer Game characters out there who are being ignored.