March Mayhem Round 1 Review – Round 2 Begins

March Mayhem’s second round has begun! To catch up on the first round’s results, check out these highlights.

March Mayhem: Developers’ Showdown continues to amaze the gaming community as the first round finishes up with great wins and amazing upsets. Round 2 will also has key match-ups that you will want to watch carefully.

Great Wins

There is some strong competition this year for the number 1 seed as Blizzard, BioWare and Valve all received tons of votes and are favored to sweep their divisions. However, they have the 2nd seeded developers to worry about still as Bethesda, Capcom and Rockstar North dealt with their opponents handily and are not looking to go home early.

Within the higher seeded brackets is newcomer Game Freak, creators of the Pokemon games, sending veteran CD Projekt packing to wait for another year. In the North Division, Treyarch and PopCap were neck and neck most of the round but Treyarch took the slight lead early and kept it for the win.

Key Upsets

There were some great round 1 upsets but the biggest was 16th seeded wildcard Mojang AB, creators of Minecraft, taking down gaming industry juggernaut Nintendo in a pitched battle. Does this Cinderella have what it takes to make it all the way and potentially knock out other tournament favorites? Only time and votes will tell but keep an eye on their next match-up again Namco Bandai in the West Division.

Also creating a wave of excitement was 15th seeded Cryptic knocking out last year’s developer killer, Zygna! The Zynga fans hung in there through the end but didn’t seem to have the support of the rest of the community this year as Cryptic and their multiple online communities get ready to take on Naughty Dog in the North Division.

For those of you who filled out brackets, the next set of upsets may have really put a damper on your predictions:

• 9th seeded Crytek (Crysis) took down 8th seeded SCE Santa Monica and the God of War community.
• 10th seeded Rockstar San Diego, developers of Red Dead Redemption send home 7th seeded BioShock 2 deveolpers 2K Marin.
• 10th seeded Remedy sends Epic Mickey and 7th seeded Disney Interactive back to the magic castle for some dancing time with the Mouseketeers.
• Two-time March Mayhem champ and 6th seeded Turbine gets ousted early by the Dead Space crew over at 11th seeded Visceral Games.
• And finally, the world of sports gets tackled for a loss of yardage as 3rd seeded EA Tiburon gets sent to the bench by 14th seeded Guitar Hero 5 developers, Neversoft

Round 2 Match-ups to Watch

Voting and tweeting gets you an extra entry towards our prizes but even after you have done that, there are a couple match-ups you will want to keep coming back to check the numbers on because we have no idea how they will turn out:

North Division
• Square Enix versus Treyarch

West Division

• Namco Bandai versus Mojang AB
• Epic Games versus Lionhead Studios

East Division

• BioWare versus DICE
• Bungie versus Rocksteady Studios

South Division

• Game Freak versus Visceral Games
• Capcom versus Rockstar San Diego

For those of you who are just joining us in March Mayhem, head over to the Rules Page to see how you can participate and start getting entries towards the amazing Alienware laptops we are giving away!

To everyone who had filled out a bracket, make sure to check out our brand new Leaderboard to see where you stack every round!

Round 2 has begun, so head over to the Official Bracket to begin voting. Welcome to the Mayhem!