TailsIsNotAlone

Basically it's all about teams and which ponies you think are the coolest and most entertaining combinations. I separated them into different "companies" to keep things organized, and only 4 of the teams from each company will make it to the real tournament. Like Lelouch in the M.A.P. Tournament, where he has an introductory round to decide which ponies will get in--this is the same idea. I had a lot of fun just coming up with all the tag teams. Button Mash? The perfect partner for Gamer Luna! Fancy and Hayseed? The ultimate odd couple. And it seems Sunset Shimmer is friends with Princess Celestia again after turning face.

Although I disapprove of Nintendo's current strategy, I think I know why they ultimately changed course. Early 90s The SNES was not as dominant as many gamers remember. It faced extremely stiff competition from Sega's Genesis for its entire run, and the Genesis 3 (a smaller version of the Genesis) actually outsold the mini-SNES at the end of that battle. Despite the competition and the Japanese recession, Nintendo still were successful with the SNES. They didn't just make games, they made memories. There will never be a console war like there was between Nintendo and Sega in the early to mid-90s. The systems had different audiences, different pros and cons, and they practically split the third parties. When a game was released on both systems, gamers cared. They rushed to compare the two versions. As the Internet really got going, so did the debates over which machine was better. It was perfect timing. Mid-90s So, what changed everything? First, mistakes by both Nintendo and Sega. Second, SONY. Sega were always better at making fun, creative arcade-style games than designing actual consoles for them or creating a viable business model. They made unnecessary, expensive add-ons to the Genesis that no one wanted, rushed the Saturn which was supposed to be their next big thing (and no one wanted to develop for it when it came out...long story), parted ways with EA and essentially took themselves out of the race. Nintendo's arrogance from the NES and SNES days backfired. They basically held a monopoly and imposed harsh terms on their 3rd party developers: "if you want to develop for us, you have to do this and this and this, and you can only release this many games in this period of time." As a result, many of those developers got sick of Nintendo, and those who didn't jump to Sega's Genesis jumped to Sony a few years later. Sony was another company P.O.'d by Nintendo. Years earlier, they wanted to partner with Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM for the SNES and even revealed a prototype of it to the public. The very next day, Nintendo announced they were going with Phillips instead. Sony was furious. They saw the potential profit in entering the gaming business as far back as the late 80s and this was all the motivation they needed to strike out on their own. They did their homework, learned from all of Sega and Nintendo's mistakes along the way, and released the PlayStation in 1995. The PlayStation changed everything. It had a strong first-party lineup, it had a lot of 3rd-party developers on its side, it was easy to develop for, and it had games on CD-ROM. When Nintendo finally got out the 64 a year later, with its odd controller and big cartridges, it looked dated and uncool. (It was a great system with better and more playable 3D games than the PS1, but most gamers didn't realize or care at the time.) Then Microsoft came out with the Xbox. It didn't have as much to offer, but it was still new competition with a lot of buzz around it. 2000s-present Things kind of snowballed from there. Nintendo lost so many developers and so much of the North American market to Sony and Microsoft that, after a final disappointment with the GameCube that called their financial security into question, Nintendo changed their whole direction. They needed a new, eye-opening gimmick that would trump anything Sony and Microsoft had, and get back the mass audience they had gradually lost.So with that in mind, they came out with the Wii. It allowed them to remain profitable in hardware, but along the way they turned off some fans who had stuck with them since the 80s or 90s--people who didn't care so much about gimmicks or the next big thing and just wanted to play good games. There were other downsides too: this still didn't bring the 3rd parties back and, at risk of sounding sentimental or illogical, they lost what BrilliantVenture called "the spirit of gaming." Again, not to dump on Nintendo alone--looking around, I don't see any console that captures that spirit. Sony and Microsoft? Please. Sony just wanted another feather in its cap and Microsoft doesn't understand anything without a "$" sign in it. The last systems that felt like real game machines might have been the Dreamcast and the GameCube, 14 years ago. Now it's all about, "let's be entertainment systems and make our consoles like low-end PCs!" That's where they lost me.

Hey, good to see you again Jamza! You're right! Well, I can hardly start off the tournament by breaking one of my own rules, so...last minute change! Photo Finish has now jumped in for Opal. (Too bad...Rarity's cat could be a much more dangerous competitor if threatened!)

NOTE: Wrestlemane-ia has ended. The team of Princess Celestia and Sunset Shimmer, AKA 'Solar Eclipse', have defeated Twilight Sparkle and Spike 31-28 to become the first-ever MLP Tag Team Champions! A big round of applause for our runner-ups, who twice came back from large deficits to make this one of the tournament's closest and most exciting matches. RESULTS OF ROUND 3 'The Princess & the Dragon', TWILIGHT SPARKLE & SPIKE def. 'Rock Candy', PINKIE PIE & MAUD PIE (31 votes to 25) 'Solar Eclipse', PRINCESS CELESTIA & SUNSET SHIMMER def. 'The Page Turners', RAINBOW DASH & DARING DO (31 votes to 25) (Better summaries than I ever could have written by The Second Opinion and EquestrianScholar. xD ) RESULTS OF ROUND 2 RESULTS OF ROUND 1 See the 16 teams that qualified and how the matchups came about. This goes in classic tournament style, with 8 matchups in Round 1, 4 matchups in Round 2, 2 matchups in Round 3, and the final 2 teams facing off at WrestleMane-ia! So I thought of something a while ago: hey (hay)! We've got a voting tournament set up like the NFL Playoffs (the Most Attractive Pony Tournament). We've got another one named after the NBA March Madness Tournament. We've even got one named after the FIFA World Cup. But one thing we've never had here as far as I know is: An MLP Tag Team Wrestling Tournament! Ponies plus fantasy wrestling? The chance to come up with the funniest tag teams I could think of? Running my own contest?? I had to try it! I did set a few ground rules for myself, before I got too excited: No Mane 6 teamed together because it's an unfair popularity advantage, and no inanimate objects or non-pony "animals" allowed. (Sorry AJ, you can't team up with Bloomberg, Fluttershy won't be stuck with Angel Bunny, and I love you Rarity, but you can't wrestle The Crab.) And a few rules for everypony else: (1) Some of the ponies teaming up may not be friends or even know each other in canon. But that's okay--we're bronies! Imagine these ponies together, promote them, post pictures of them together (SFW) if you wish! xD (2) Play nice. We all know these competitions sometimes get intense, but please keep your comments positive. Advocate for your favorite team/s as much as you like, but don't bash the others.

My perspective on gaming is a little different; I don't play online games, so Nintendo's lack of an online experience would not be an issue for me. Some might complain that they're too old-fashioned; my issue is that they're not old-fashioned enough. Since the Wii generation they've left behind their traditional fans and pure gaming roots and tried to be kind of a half-assed alternative between the old and the new, holding themselves back in some areas while jumping ahead with unappealing gimmicks in others (like the controllers and unnecessary 3D handhelds). Nintendo still sells like crazy, especially in Japan, but they're not leaving a lasting impact on gaming with anything they do now. None of it really seems important. They can always fall back on the strength of their first-party franchises like Mario and Zelda, but I don't care about franchises, I care about individual gaming experiences. A game has to have that special something that hooks me. That's why I've played the hell out of Donkey Kong Country 2, but I rarely play DKC 1 and I sold my copy of DKC 3. I played all Nintendo systems as a kid right up to the 64 and I pull out my GameCube once in a while, too. But once they got to the Wii series and the 3DS, it was plain to see I wasn't their target audience anymore. I'm part of a slightly older, traditional gaming crowd that's kind of been hung out to dry in the last ten years or so, and I don't see that changing in the near future. -_-

If Lyra fell on me I would probably be badly injured. But if cartoon logic applied and neither of us was hurt, I'd be amazed and say, "Welcome to the human world, Lyra. Could you please get off me?"

I'm not a teenager, I mostly keep it to myself, I don't attend conventions, and I'm not a Furry.

Guess I'll never find out unless some kind of interdimensional rift opens up. I'm not one for romantic relationships, and I don't really date at all. On the other hand, I do find various ponies "attractive" on some level or another, so it's not out of the question. There's nothing morally wrong with it if you're both sentient beings with equal rights, so I have no objections there. Still, can you imagine how weird a date with Twilight or Applejack would be? Twilight would be asking about your human world and physiology the whole time (not for the reasons you might hope) and AJ would probably talk your ear off about apples.

I'm getting flashbacks... I voted for Nightmare Moon. Any version of Luna is attractive, but NM really did have an awesome design.

For the record, I am close friends with one of my plushies. Have been for about 6 months. (She's not an MLP plushie but we do watch the show together. ) Crushes on fictional characters? I've had lots. I'd be here an hour if I tried to list them all. The first one might have been Princess Sally from Sonic SatAM when I was six...the latest, I would have to say Maud Pie.

I'm sorry to hear that, Obsidian. I hope you feel better! I was gone for about a year myself and can sympathize. I had a hard time figuring out my whole fanfiction conundrum and what I should do next as a fan. I have to credit Rarity with giving me some direction, though.

I don't think there's much doubt that at least some of Nightmare Moon's motives stem from evil--jealousy, resentment, hatred--that's reason enough for Celestia and the Mane 6 to oppose her. At the same time, she was an enigmatic figure who was defeated in a single evening, so we never got a chance to see what her rule would have actually been like (several fanfics address this in a very interesting manner). In particular, I think we get a little bit carried away with the "night will last forever" = DYING PLANTS STARVATION GENOCIDE ARRRRGH. Let's step back for a second and remember: this is a cartoon. Real world logic and science do not apply unless the writers want them to. For one thing we don't know if eternal night was Nightmare Moon's actual intent or simply a metaphor. For another, how do we know it would have had any consequences in the MLP universe besides it simply being dark out all the time? I mean, look at Discord. When he spread chaos throughout Ponyville, exactly how deep did that chaos go? Where did it begin and end? Could Discord manipulate the laws of physics at will or was he simply inducing hallucinations? Did it stop at chocolate rain and the Mane 6 betraying their elements, or was it physiological as well? Did it cause the pony's cells to stop reproducing? Did it play havoc with their molecules and cause them to disintegrate? Did Discord commit mass murder? MILLIONS OF PONIES COULD HAVE DIED AND WE DIDN'T SEE IT! ...Except that it's a cartoon, and was never meant to be analyzed like that. So I choose to disregard the "eternal night" thing in this case. I still have a lot of basic questions about the whole NM era that the show never answered. All we really got was Celestia's explanation, not Luna's. History is written by the winners. Who's to say Celestia wasn't also to blame for what went wrong?

I am not usually one to bump old threads, Batbrony, but after stumbling on this one during a lurking session, several important points occur to me. 1. You, as a discerning and reasonable "conservative at heart," are too good for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The author of the article generalizes and cherry-picks the darkest themes from several young adult novels to support her predetermined stance. She especially gives away her bias by stating that young adult fiction did not exist before the 1960s (come on, really?) and that everything changed after that. It seems to me that right-wing punditry can be recognized by a handful of poorly developed arguments, and one of them is "everything went bad in the 1960s." (This is clearly false. There was nothing wrong with the country in the 60s that didn't exist in the 50s and before. It just generally wasn't seen or talked about very much.) Another red flag is that the writer more or less endorses censorship but tries to couch it in gentler terms like "guidance" or "judgment." As a whole, the piece stirs up old parental fears and offers no positives or real solutions--that would have distracted readers from the alarmist message. 2. On the whole, I agree with your basic premise that some young adult fiction these days is dark, depressing, and explicit, perhaps more than it needs to be to get any valuable message across. I am very often annoyed by this trend, particularly when it is gratuitous or clearly being done to force interest in the proceedings because the author can't write real, interesting characters for us to identify with (Twilight!). 3. This general argument leads me to one thing I don't relate to in bronydom: grimdark. I don't see the appeal in this trend at all. I can appreciate a sad story if it has a point to make, but when you take the ponies out of a wonderful, positive show and throw them into soul-crushing dystopias with rape, gore, terminal disease, or use them to justify raving misanthropy, you've lost me. Completely. 4. Ultimately, though, I think the whole darkness thing is a matter of good taste and how much you can handle. We shouldn't stop teenagers (which is what people age 12-18 are--not "children" in the genuine sense of the word) from reading stuff that personally appeals to them. You won't accomplish anything by telling your kids what they can and can't read. But you will get somewhere by paying attention to what they're reading and discussing it with them. Who's to say that the kid reading The Hunger Games hasn't already read The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well?

Who? I have a disability and I don't support Derpy. I'm indifferent. To me she's just a klutz with a funny voice who happens to be cross-eyed. I don't see anything about her to look up to, but she doesn't offend me either.

First give me one good reason why I should have to choose between two delightful, strong, athletic, and dependable ponies! I love them both.

Her design was one of the best on the show (still is) and she had a great voice; Kathleen Barr did a great job with her. I think some bronies also sympathized with her compulsive showboating and egotism, or at least found it intriguing. Me not so much, but I do like her for the other reasons mentioned above.

Someone who listens, who cares, and can be counted on to be there when I need them and do what they say they're going to do. I haven't met a lot of those people.

Considering that we had to face Luna, as well as Fluttershy who beat Rarity twice before, and that Rares had never won a major forum contest before this...yes. Not that Rarity didn't deserve to win. There was certainly no doubt about that--we just had to deliver the goods on her behalf. This time there were enough passionate Rarity fans to answer the call and carry her gently to victory. I think we all know how the pearlpone will celebrate this achievement...

^ What an amazing picture (the first one). Look at the detail--the shading, the texture. So much work must have gone into that. Then again, it is Spoony we're talking about! What I really like about Silver, besides her design, is the accessories. The big ol' glasses, the pearl necklace, the hair tie. It all matches and fits her so perfectly. You'll never mistake her for another pony. Here's something really different: Silver Spoon reading Nietzsche. Only in the brony fandom, I tell you!

Not the first time I've said this but the answer is NO. No offense, I love you guys, but this was a classic example of adults over-thinking a kids' show. They called it the Mirror Pool for a reason. Not the Clone Pool. It was never suggested that the other Pinkies were anything more than reflections of the original, to which the power of the Pool gave a physical presence. When Twilight spotted the fakes one by one and popped them like balloons, we clearly saw them dissipating into magical energy and floating back to where they came from. No death, no carnage. It's like saying I murdered a glass of water when all I did was pour it back down the sink. I can understand bronies, on a morbid level, wanting to believe that the other Pinkies were living beings because it is thought-provoking and makes for good fan fiction, but the premise doesn't stand up.

Oh! My mistake, now I understand. That's not a bad idea I suppose...we do have a Character Database but it's for roleplays only. A new section for OC's might make a good addition to Creative Resources.