LogFAQs > #984115274

3. Mario vs. Cloud Strife (2002) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/73ea68ac.jpg

Mario 50.11% 64990
Cloud Strife 49.89% 64713
TOTAL VOTES 129703
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs_(2)Cloud_Strife_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/996-north-division-final-mario-vs-cloud-strife

There are hyped matches, and then there are hyped matches. All this time later, with twenty extra years worth of backstory and precedent to draw upon, there has still never been a match that was able to generate as much hype as this one. This showdown between Mario and Cloud from all the way back in Contest #1. When it came to the first contest, we didnt quite know what to expect for a lot of things. We had no concept or framework for how the matches would play out, whether theyd be something that you checked in with once a day, saw the results, and moved on, or whether theyd be all day, back and forth, affairs. The fact that a match could be exciting was not something that was taken for granted like it is nowadays and there was no reason yet to think of contest matches as anything more than puffed up Polls of the Days. Dont get me wrong. There was a ton of excitement generated by the contest of course, but the excitement came from making predictions and seeing where everything ended up, not necessarily in the manner that the actual poll played out. Despite all this though, we could tell that this match was different. If there was one match that we knew would dominate our attention for all 24 hours it was occurring, it was Mario Vs. Cloud.

The appeal behind the match was obvious, and initially at least, it was considered to be by far the most important matchup in a bracket filled with important matchups. While it might not have been reflected in the overall prediction percentages, this was the match that, to the board at least, was potentially determining the winner of the entire contest. Mario was Mario of course. He would be the obvious winner for the inaugural Character Battle on any gaming web site at any point throughout history, and that was certainly the case here as well. Cloud might have been a more unconventional choice, but to anyone who properly understood the culture of the site, he made perfect sense as well. FFVII was the game that essentially built GameFAQS and whether the sites users first came here for help with the game or not, its legacy loomed large over the site. To anyone with their ear to the ground the importance of FFVII was clear, and anyone that doubted Cloud did so at their own peril, as to the voters of GameFAQS he was almost as iconic as Mario was. Before we even knew how intertwined the Nintendo Vs. Square rivalry would be with the future of the contests, we knew that there was an existential statement being made with the result of this match.

And for the first several weeks, things were not looking good for Mario. Marios underwhelming victory over Servbot wasnt really considered that underwhelming on the day of the match; after all, we had nothing else to compare it to. That perspective changed real soon though after Clouds first round victory over Fox. This wasnt a debated matched exactly, but there was actually a decent amount of dark horse support for Fox at the time, so for Cloud to come in and blow him out of the water was a surprise. And to do so by an even larger margin than Mario had done against Servbot marked a laying down of the gauntlet for their upcoming R4 match in a major way. In a vacuum, Marios performance against Servbot was fine, but when compared to Cloud, it seemed severely lacking. We didnt need the framework of the Xstats to eyeball the two characters opponents and determine which one of them was facing stronger competition. And then, in R2, the comparison became even more lopsided. Mario just barely managed to double Morrigan, not exactly a character with the biggest name recognition, while Cloud completely laid into Pikachu, not only surpassing his numbers from the previous round, but coming close to 80/20ing the Nintendo icon. Yes, there were explanations for both these results. Morrigan had had a particularly strong R1 while Pikachu had had a particularly weak one. However, the comparisons were hard to ignore, and Mario was quickly falling out of contention. As the obvious favorite, not just for R4 but for the entire contest, Mario had generated a lot of haters and anti-voters by this time, and seeing blood in the water they started salivating, creating a snowball effect that threatened to overwhelm any bracket advantage Mario might have going into the latter rounds. He needed something to come along and change the momentum. Change the momentum, and change it now, because otherwise Mario was heading for an earlier than expected exit.

Finally, in Round 3 Mario got a bit of good news, destroying Donkey Kong with over 80%, topping Clouds performance from any previous round. Cloud would have a solid victory over Alucard himself, but Mario had finally managed to stop the bleeding. Mario might no longer be the clear favorite in the next round, but neither was Cloud. In the boards eyes, the odds for the North Division Finals had reverted to the mean: 50/50 in both directions. The most hotly anticipated match since Day 1 had managed to remain that way all the way up to Day 50, and it was increasingly looking like anyones match to win. If only there was something that could give one of the two an advantage Of course, there was. It had not gone unnoticed that Mario/Cloud was set to take place on the release day of Super Mario Sunshine, the biggest Mario game in six years, and the first mainline Mario game since Super Mario 64. The hype for the new game, while not uncomplicated (Clean is cleaner than dirty!), was massive, and even when Mario looked shaky early on, the games release date was Marios ace in the hole. And aside from the assistance that the game gave to Marios contest hopes, it ratcheted up the hype on the site just that much more. As did the previous two days of matches, both featuring their own 50/50 showdowns between contest elites. A confluence of multiple different hype factors was converging on GameFAQS, and the only thing more shocking than all of this coming together was that the match somehow lived up to the hype.