Board 8 > The 128 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time - The Top 20

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"Just, one more thing... The people and the friends that we have lost, or the dreams that have faded...Never forget them."
--- Yuna, Final Fantasy X

Just reposting the last 4 matches for now.

20. Aya Brea vs. Donkey Kong (2002) R2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/252bdf25.jpg

Aya Brea 48.94% 30478
Donkey Kong 51.06% 31798
TOTAL VOTES 62276
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Aya_Brea_vs_(4)Donkey_Kong_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/973-north-division-round-2-aya-brea-vs-donkey-kong

What is the appeal of the Contests? Is it just simply about predicting things, guessing whats popular, etc., and the matches themselves are secondary? Prior to the first Character Battle in 2002, contests were a regular feature on the site, but not the kind of capital-C Contests that we all know and love. Several times a year, every two or three months, Ceej would have a competition for the sites members, and these could be any number of things, ranging from having to predict a game/character based on a partial or manipulated screenshot, predicting the 10 most visited FAQS of the year, or even predicting the results of a demographic questionnaire posed to site members. Im no mind reader, but Im sure that as Ceej was putting together the first Character Battle, he considered it of a piece with these other competitions. A more expansive competition, sure, (he knew enough to create a board to discuss it right away), but something that was at least roughly in line with those other contests. Fun diversions to pass the time and see how much you knew about your fellow users. That was how it had been before, but the first Character Battle would change everything. We would have two other small competitions in that earlier vein later in the year, but aside from the 10th Anniversary Contest in 2005, it was Bracket Battles from here on out.

Once again, I dont know how much of what followed Ceej had foreseen, but it strikes me that the Contest being structured the way it was was no guarantee. There was no reason we *had* to see the polls play out live. We could just find out the result after the fact, or maybe every participant in the contest could fill out their votes along with their prediction, the same way that similar contests had worked. The contest was structured the way it was however, and while it was obvious from the very first match that there was something special with the Character Battle, it would take a while before a match came along that showed what more was possible from these things besides just predicting results. The First Round had its share of excitement, but the individual matches themselves werent anything that required a serious investment of time. You would look at the results, and as surprising as they might be, you would go Oh, thats an upset! or Oh, thats a big blowout! and then briefly discuss the implications of said result with other users for a while before going on with your day.The results themselves were the interesting part, not so much the journey to get there. Despite the desperate pleas for the kiddies to wake up, if there were any kind of drastic vote shifts that occurred in this first set of matches, they went largely unremarked on, and surprisingly, there was not a single match in Round 1 that featured a comeback, or was anything that might be considered a nailbiter. The closest match was Strider/Raziel, which, while a relatively narrow result, never became a 50/50 affair.

Round 2 started off with Mario/Morrigan which played out along these same lines, but then finally, with the second match of the round, we had something new on our hands. Donkey Kong was briefly ahead at the polls beginning, being a massive bracket favorite after all, but after the initial rush of votes, something shocking happened. Aya took the lead. Someone who many thought wouldnt make it out of the First Round was going toe to toe with a gaming icon. And as the Night Vote kicked in, Aya built that lead up, gaining around a 1,000 vote lead on DK by daybreak. We had seen some upsets in Round 1, but this one topped them all. But then, as the Day Vote began, something even more unprecedented happened: Donkey Kong started tocome back? Was such a thing possible? Just you wait til the kiddies wake up had become a joke by this point, and while it might not have been enough to redeem Spyros disaster in Round 1, the overall concept of Vote Trends was turning out to be quite real indeed. DK would tear into Ayas lead as the morning went on, eventually overtaking her and building up a lead of his own.

It was around this time that I, and I imagine a lot of other board regulars, logged on for the day and saw what was going on. Keep in mind that at this point in time, outside of a few obsessives, people werent maniacally tracking each poll from its very start. Not only because in a pre-smartphone, heavily pre-broadband era it wasnt customary to be online 24/7, but also because, prior to Aya/DK, there was no reason to be following along with a match in real time, let alone from the very beginning. Realizing that not only was there a 50/50 match going on but that the balance of power in it was shifting right in front of my eyes,I joined the rest of the site in a brand new practice: mass refreshing the poll as often as possible to see what the results were and where they were trending. Our eyes remained glued to the poll, and for the first time in contest history the way the poll played out generated more attention than the result itself.

Donkey Kong would eventually run away with the Day Vote, putting the match out of reach by the afternoon, but the drama wasnt over yet, as Aya would go on a 1,000 vote comeback of her own in the polls final hours*. Impressive, but ultimately not enough, and Donkey Kong would limp into the Sweet Sixteen. Aside from being one of the definitive Only on GameFAQS results (where else but on this site in 2002 is this a nailbiter), as well as establishing DKs bonafides as a choke artist, this match would be one of the most foundational ones in contest history. Every moment spent sitting in awe of the Day (or Night) Vote, every stomach turning bout of anxiety before refreshing a poll, every back of the envelope calculation to see if a comeback is still viable. They all come back to this match.

*I was able to find contemporaneous commentary from two weeks after this match in the one archived Stats Topic from 2002 where a user states that Donkey Kongs lead got up to 3,000. That would put Ayas comeback at around 1,700 which considering that the match only got 62,000 votes seems quite hard to believe, especially if it came right at the end, when votes should be slowing down. Looking into things, it appears as if Parasite Eve was never released in Europe, which actually would partly explain such an extreme vote shift, but I still find the scale of those numbers questionable.

19. Donkey Kong vs. Duck Hunt (Sp2004) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9a552f6b.jpg

Donkey Kong 50.07% 48587
Duck Hunt 49.93% 48444
TOTAL VOTES 97031
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(6)Donkey_Kong_vs_(11)Duck_Hunt_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1605-division-8-round-1-donkey-kong-vs-duck-hunt

I know the complaints coming about this match already. That there were no stakes. That the contestants were fodder. That this was just a pointless Round 1 match whose winner was always fated to get completely blown out the following round. All those reasons are *exactly* why it is so high on this list. The fact that such an objectively irrelevant match could produce the result it did is what makes this match so special. With the exception of Draven/Undertale matches, there is only one match in contest history to feature a 3,000 vote comeback. Its not a match featuring the Noble Nine or even a pair of Near Elites, its this one. Donkey Kong and Duck Hunt, two fodder games, who, in theory at least, share the same fanbase managed to produce a comeback which to this day has yet to be topped. Theres no greater contest narrative that this match ties into, no implications for anything else. Its just a pure diamond of a match, an objet dart.

While the hype didnt extend much past the match itself, there was still a decent amount of hype for this match going in. Classification-wise, it falls into a group I call Those Matches, 1 point, Round 1 matches that split the board almost evenly, and which actually do end up being relatively close in the end. Everyone knows that the winner will lose in the next round, but these matches inevitably take on outsized importance in board discussion, something about the raw simplicity of a 50/50 split with no past or future complications generating a higher than expected degree of tension. By the time you get to the big name clashes in later rounds, the data points are numerous enough to generate a narrative that can either be accepted or refuted in a couple of sentences, but theres something about the black box nature of a Round 1 tossup that causes people to generate reams of speculative analysis from the smallest of minutia. And there was certainly plenty of analysis spilled on this match. Duck Hunt was a game that everyone had played, but did anyone actually care about it? Donkey Kongs status in gaming history was legendary, but was it too old-fashioned for modern day voters to support? These questions divided the board, and going into the match it was considered anyones game.

The match started with a decently close result, the Board Vote not seeming to favor any one game, much as youd expect in a closely debated match such as this. As the First Night Vote started to kick in however, Donkey Kong began running away with things, and the dream of a nailbiter began to fade further and further away. While it would take 4 hours for Donkey Kongs lead to break 1,000, it would take only two more for it to break 2,000. Donkey Kongs overall percentage broke 56% around this time, and stayed at that number all throughout the morning, its lead frequently increasing by triple digits in the 15 minute updates that were customary at the time. Duck Hunt had looked like it could keep up early on, but those days were long gone at this point. Donkey Kong slowed down a little as the day went on, but even so, its lead would break 3,000 votes just past noon, and would keep rising afterwards. This was a number far removed from what we had seen in any previous comeback, and there was very little doubt in anyones mind that Donkey Kong would not keep continuing on the way it was.

At 1:45 PM EST, Donkey Kongs lead would reach its peak: 3,251 votes. With one exception, it had increased that lead with every single update for the past 11 hours straight. And even after that one cut an hour previously, Donkey Kong had bounced right back and kept increasing as steadily as before. At 2:00 PM however, Duck Hunt would make a 45 vote cut and the match would change instantly. Donkey Kong would manage to barely make a gain the following update, but from then onward, it would be 9 straight hours of Duck Hunt gains. If there is such a thing as a mathematically perfect comeback, this was it. Look at later matches like Halo/Starcraft or SoulCalibur/Kingdom Hearts. There is an hour or two of back and forth when vote shifts happen, or when comebacks begin. In Donkey Kong/Duck Hunt, there was none of that. It was as if a switch had been flipped at the halfway point of the match and all of a sudden the polarity was reversed. One update Donkey Kong was the one gaining and gaining, and by the very next update that role had shifted to Duck Hunt.

While one or even two cuts might be a fluke, it was immediately clear that this was nothing of the sort as the ASV (not that we called it that at the time) began in earnest and Duck Hunt started to tear into the lead in update after update. Initially taken by surprise, once we realized that we had a comeback on our hands, the board got straight to work doing what we do best, crunching numbers. While a 3,000 vote comeback is an extremely daunting figure, the poll trackers made their calculations and determined that if Duck Hunt kept up its comeback at its current pace, it would manage to regain the lead.right as the poll was ending. Time passed, the comeback continued, and Duck Hunts pace was recalculated. Now it was projected to take back the lead.right as the poll was ending. The only thing more perfect than the comebacks immediacy was its consistency. No matter how much the total incoming votes ebbed and flowed, Duck Hunts cuts would match the input perfectly. After every update was posted in the Poll Update Topic, there was a note saying how much of a gain Duck Hunt would need on the next update in order to stay on pace to win. Duck Hunt would hit that mark with a freakish exactitude almost every time. It was on pace to win, but it was going to be a photo finish. As afternoon turned into evening, incoming votes slowed, meaning that if Duck Hunt wanted to keep up its pace it would have to start gaining a larger and larger percentage of the incoming votes. Well, what did it do? It started to gain a larger and larger percentage of the incoming votes.

As the night wore on, the board crackled with an energy that was normally reserved for the battles of the Noble Nine. But the Noble Nine, for all their strength, had never done anything like this. Theyd never taken a 3,000 vote deficit, and on a dime, started to turn it around. They had never been propelled with this kind of unstoppable momentum for this long without missing a beat. The only entrant to ever show that kind of skill was, well, Duck Hunt. We werent entirely sure what was going on, but it was hard to not accept that Duck Hunt was on the verge of brute forcing its way to victory. And it almost did. Duck Hunt was able to near perfectly keep up its pace until the final minute, but near perfect was not quite good enough, not when youre behind by as much as Duck Hunt was. Donkey Kong would manage to win three updates in the final hours of the poll, which was not much, but just enough to barely hold on. When all was said and done, Duck Hunt had managed to come back by 3,108 votes in a match without major rallies, more than any entrant would ever do before or since. It had not won the match, but it had set a record that would never be broken.

18. Starcraft vs. Super Smash Bros. Melee (Sp2004) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/329c8a79.jpg

Starcraft 49.73% 48548
Super Smash Bros. Melee 50.27% 49082
TOTAL VOTES 97630
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(16)Starcraft_vs_(2)Super_Smash_Bros._Melee_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1660-division-final-starcraft-vs-super-smash-bros-melee

It is not uncommon for a latter round match to have an entrant that no one predicted. What is uncommon though is for both entrants to be unexpected, and thats exactly what we got in the Finals of the 128 Bit Division in 2004. Both entrants had made it here on the back of an underdog run, but one of those runs would be put to an end with this match, and the only thing left was to see which one it was. Melee had gone up against a trio of PS2 icons and beaten them all, most notably FFX, which had been the favorite both to advance in Melee's place, and to win the entire division. There were no sure bets in the 128 Bit Division that year, but if anyone had been willing to place money on anything, it would have been on FFX. As the one to take down FFX, Melee took on the mantle of the one to beat instead, however as previously mentioned, it was not the only game with a Cinderella run going into the match.

Enter Starcraft. Melee's run would be considered the most unpredictable of the contest in any other year, but in terms of upsets, in 2004 it was impossible to beat Starcraft. Its run is considered the most legendary in contest history for a reason, and this can be attested by the fact that three of its four matches that year made my Top 20. Starcraft had hit a perfect storm thus far in the contest, running up against the most anti-voted game on each of the three current systems, but that luck would finally run out with Melee, the only game in the division that could rival the fervor SCs fanbase felt for it. It was one thing to think that Halo or Wind Waker needed to be taken down a notch, but convincing people in 2004 that Melee had its loss coming would be a tougher sell. There was also the persistent question that had been dogging Starcraft all contest, the repeated refrain that questioned how much of Starcrafts success was really due to luck. Its victories tended to come on the heels of a last minute comeback, allegedly aided and abetted by a series of rallies from Battle.net. Aside from the usual drama that has always swirled around tipping point rallies, Starcraft was repeatedly attacked with the speculation that the rallies were just a smokescreen for the real cause of its comebacks: vote stuffing. The fact that these huge swings kept occurring right at the very end of each match was enough to rouse many users suspicions, and while no one could prove it, many people remained on high alert, just waiting for Starcraft to be exposed as the cheat they knew it was.

Melee might have been the slight favorite going into the match, but Starcraft came away from the Board Vote with the lead, narrowly holding onto it for the first several hours of the poll. It would never bring its lead much beyond 200 votes however, and once the Morning Vote kicked in, Melee made quick work of things, wiping out Starcraft's lead with ease and building up a lead of its own. Despite this being a Weekday Match, Melee seemed mostly unaffected by the usual schoolday trends, barely dipping during the Midday Vote, and increasing its margins consistently for 12 straight hours. For most matches, things would have been considered over by this point, but when it came to Starcraft we had learned to expect the unexpected. We were on the verge of the Second Night Vote, right when Starcraft had made its previous moves. Still, this time it was looking to be a bridge too far. Halo had been ahead by just over 1,000 votes at this time, Wind Waker by just over 2,000. Melee was ahead by 3,500. Could the Zerg Rush really overwhelm this kind of a lead? We all stood by, holding our breaths, waiting for another miracle to happen.

And then, shortly after 8:30 PM EST, something even more inexplicable than a miracle took place. Within a minute, Starcraft cut 100 votes from the lead. And then, almost just as quickly, Starcraft did it again. For nearly half an hour, a deluge of Starcraft votes poured into the site, its numbers spiking to astronomical levels as it cut 1,000 votes from the lead in only 20 minutes. We had seen rallies before, but this was factors beyond what we knew a rally to be capable of at this time. Hell, even a latter day megarally like Undertale's was unable to do more than match the pace set here. Matches played out live at this point, and we could watch in real time as hundreds of suspicious votes came in for Starcraft, one after another. There was only one explanation remaining, and that was vote stuffing. The stuffer quickly realized that they had been caught, and within 30 minutes the spike receded, but the damage had been done. The comeback would slow to a trickle but it would keep coming. In the most dramatic way possible, Starcraft's nightly comeback had begun.

The spike might have scared us, but Starcraft still had 2,500 votes to go at this point, and if it stuck to previous trends it would wind up just short. Still, trends or no, we had just witnessed the most blatantly obvious example of cheating in contest history, and Ceej was yet to respond. The night and the comeback wore on for several more hours before CJay finally spoke in a series of messages to the board. Yes, there was evidence of hundreds of stuffed votes for Starcraft during the suspicious time frame, and if necessary they would be removed from the final total. However, the scale of the stuffing was so massive that instead of having to sort through the results and remove every last illegitimate vote, Ceej would just wait and see if the stuffed votes would make a difference. If Melee won, the result would stand. If Starcraft won, it would see hundreds, if not 1,000+ votes removed. The match would continue on for several more hours after this, and Starcraft would finish with a spirited last minute comeback attempt like always, but the match was basically over the second Ceej made his post. Even if Starcraft won, it would most likely lose, and in the end it couldnt even do that, Melee pulling off a narrow victory, even with the stuffed votes remaining intact.

Smash Bros. has become such an institution on the site, and such a source of contest strength, that it can be hard to remember a time when its power took us all by surprise. Its not an obvious fit for such an RPG friendly site, and its prediction percentage coming out of this match certainly reflects that. However, against all odds, GameFAQS had declared it the best current-gen game, and its trajectory in the zeitgeist changed for good. Starcrafts reputation would also come away from this match permanently altered. While its contest achievements could not be denied, and its place in history strongly secured, the narrative of the naysayers who had doubted its legitimacy all along had temporarily taken precedence over the narrative of Starcraft as the plucky underdog. It had ended its first contest run mired in scandal, but oh what a run it had been.

17. Magus vs. Knuckles the Echidna (2005) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3fe8debd.jpg

Magus 49.14% 50153
Knuckles the Echidna 50.86% 51909
TOTAL VOTES 102062
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(3)Magus_vs_(6)Knuckles_the_Echidna_2005
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2088-devil-division-round-1-magus-vs-knuckles-the-echidna

Nobody saw it coming. Thats a phrase that gets thrown around all the time when discussing upsets, but its usually an exaggeration. Theres always some core group of people, no matter how small, who were sniffing around the upset, even if very few of them were willing to take a risk and pick it. Magus/Knuckles was different. OK, sure, Smurf did predict it, but hes a Sonic fanboy, so who knows how much though was put into that prediction. Absolutely no one that was thinking critically about this match had any idea that its result was a possibility. It was a shock out of the blue, made even more stunning by the fact that it wasnt some newcomer or unknown quality that was involved. It was two contest mainstays who took us all by surprise, and forced us to reevaluate how accurate all of our received wisdom was. That helped up the ante even more and helped transform the match from a simple upset, no matter how unexpected, into a match that tied into narratives and character journeys that would span close to 20 years.

Ive written at length so far about Maguss journey through contest history. Im sure its repetitive, but its hard not to pay a bit of extra attention to Magus, the character who has one of the most memorable narratives in contest history. Going into 2005, he was still riding high in the initial stage of his journey though, widely considered to be the strongest character not in the Noble Nine, and one of the only ones with the capacity to break it. And this wasnt based on speculation or dodgy math; it was based off of a direct 1v1 match against Link himself. Even the lol, xstats crew would find that hard to argue against. But yet, there were signs that something was off with that result. While Magus himself would only have two inscrutable matches in 04, the other characters from his 03 fourpack (Ganondorf, Tidus, Sam Fisher) all had underperformances that following year. Even though there was no strong explanation provided as to why, it began to be speculated that Maguss 35% against Link was an overperformance, and, as if to test that theory, a Round 2 Match was set up in 05 between Magus and Squall, seemingly settling once and for all the debate as to who was the strongest Near Elite.

The board by and large sided with Magus, and much has been made over the years of this being the defining example of board groupthink and of ignoring the obvious signs that were staring everyone right in the face. That is certainly true to an extent, and whenever a result that hinted at Maguss weakness was brought up, people would dismiss it with an excuse. What makes this different from other groupthink situations though, is that those excuses werent just a cope; there were a lot of legitimate counters that were brought up, and seemingly contradictory results that dont have a good explanation. Ive tried not to get into the nitty gritty of re-litigating match debates from 20 years ago, but I think for this match its relevant just to demonstrate the sheer volume of coincidences that had to pile up in order to hide Maguss weakness.

First off, one of the big points against Maguss 03 value being legitimate was Tiduss weaker than expected performance against Mega Man in 04. But the thing is, if that match went against his value from 03, his Round 1 match did the exact opposite. Tidus was expected, based on the 03 stats, to have a 50/50 match with Shadow, and thats exactly what he did. It just so happened that Shadows value in 03 was also inflated for unclear reasons, for exactly the same amount. Plus, going back even further, Tiduss 02 X-Stat value was inflated as well, making the 03 value look more legitimate. Didnt Ganondorf do a little worse than expected against Alucard in 04? Sure, but due to Twilight Princess and Villain Contest hype, Ganondorf eventually boosted to his inflated 03 value anyway, once again appearing to legitimize his 03 value. Even matches that didnt directly involve any of the characters in that four pack played a role. Did Sam Fisher look weaker than he should have in 04? Sure, and while Samus overperformed on him, she also legitimately overperformed against Lara the round before (once again for unexplained reasons), making Sams numbers against her easier to dismiss than they should have been. And hadnt Frog almost beaten Snake? Surely that implied something about Maguss strength as well. If all of this made Maguss fourpack hard to decode, things were obfuscated even more by Ceejs decision to make 04 an SFF-fest, reducing the accuracy of its results, and also banning Magus and Shadow from the Villain Contest, which might have exposed either of their real popularities much earlier. As I said earlier, all the signs were there, but it is truly impressive how much was there to mask the signs as well.

In any case, as Round 1 went on, people went back and forth litigating and re-litigating the arguments listed above, not in preparation for any kind of Round 1 match, but in excited anticipation for the Magus/Squall showdown of Round 2. Even Squall supporters werent expecting Magus to lose before getting there. His match with Knuckles was just supposed to be a testing ground to see if he would show any signs of weakness, to see if he would dip below the 60/40 result that most people were expecting. The match started, and from the very start, the Magus doubters were vindicated. Magus was winning, but he was winning by less than 60/40. *Much* less. Still, for the first hour or so, he was building up his lead steadily, even if he seemed to have stabilized around 54%. His match against Squall was in serious jeopardy, but thered be time for that later. And then, around 90 minutes in, as the Power Hour wore off, Maguss time started to run out. His percentage collapsed, and Knuckles was stalling him out consistently, keeping Maguss lead steady at a mere 600 votes. There was little doubt that Knuckles would win the Day Vote, and, with Maguss lead sitting where it was, that would almost certainly be enough to win the entire match as well. The board sat in shock, watching this all play out, as Knuckles did what the trends would predict, coming on strong during the day, and putting the match away for good. Magus would manage to pull off a near 1,000 vote comeback over the last several hours of the match, but it would not be enough. The character that most people had taken to win the entire Devil Division had just been eliminated in the First Round, before the showdown with Squall had even happened.

As stunning as the result was, it was relatively clear what had caused it, even if the scale of Maguss 03 overperformance was hard to grasp. Thanks to all the Magus/Squall debate, we knew that there was a chance Magus had been overrated, but we had no clue that it had been by this much. Even though the Link/Magus result didnt have a very good explanation behind it, we understood that flukes can happen, and that there is a degree of year to year variability when it comes to X-Stats results. What happened in this match however, was far beyond some annual volatility, and called into question how we were predicting matches in the first place. The match wasnt necessarily a serious blow to the infallibility of the X-Stats, since after all the Magus is overrated argument itself had relied on that kind of extrapolation of results, but it certainly called into question how much confidence we should all be placing in our received expertise. The match had been an upset among overall bracketmakers as well, but not a unanimous one. 35% of the site had correctly predicted Knuckles to win. Once the shock of it wore off, the boards reaction shifted more towards embarrassment. How could we not have seen this coming?

The aftermath among users would be nothing of course when compared to the aftermath that hit Magus himself. He had been exposed as a fraud in the most dramatic way possible, his reputation destroyed instantaneously. Magus was not just a bracket favorite, but a personal favorite for the board as well, having been voted as the Boards favorite VG character for the second time in a row only a month before this match took place, and that intensified the reaction all the more. When all was said and done, his strength this year probably wasnt even *that* far off from where we had thought it should be, but Maguss role as *The* Noble Nine Breaker in the boards imaginary, along with the affection the board held for him, was so strong that even this mild drop seemed precipitous. And while Magus might have still looked strong in 05, first round loss aside, the same could not be said for him in subsequent years, as in contest after contest he would lose and be upset in increasingly embarrassing ways. A character who was once thought to be capable of beating Snake, by 2013, had people doubting whether or not he could beat Otacon. Never has a character fallen so far in our estimation, and it all started with this match.

Aw yeah

And after all that, Knuckles lost in round 2 again. At least it wasn't to Snake.

Knuckles and Tidus still have never made it beyond round 2

also one of my favorite B8 contest factoids ever that reflects just how debated the Devil Division was

RPGuy96 only got one match correct in that entire division, and that was Squall > Geno

Yes, people actually took Terra > Dante because the mentality was still out there that the main character had to be stronger than the villain, and so Terra had to be stronger than Kefka, if nothing else.

(ironically Terra actually ranks higher than Kefka in the 2018 X-Stats so it eventually kinda became true!)

Just need that FFVI remake and Terra will be Noble Nine level

Despite never getting past round 2, Knuckles absolutely refuses to fold in round 1, almost always killing Square, even the one time he did bow out in round 1. His eliminated Square RPG charcater vs. character battle ratio is 1:1!

I have forgot exactly what is left, but this to me should be a top 2 round 1 match. Certain the other one I'm thinking of is still left.

If it's another 2005 match, you're correct

It is!

Though I didn't think of games at the time. Halo vs. Starcraft is still there as well, right.

I'm honestly shocked Knux vs. Magus isn't higher. One of the most consequential Round 1 matches ever.

16. Mario vs. Samus Aran II (2018) LB

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/1582427e.png

Mario 50.03% 14343
Samus Aran 49.97% 14324
TOTAL VOTES 28667
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(7)Mario_vs_(2)Samus_Aran_(Losers_Bracket)_2018
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7383-loser-bracket-round-4-mario-vs-samus

When I was in high school, a friend of mine was in a conversation with someone from another school who was talking about an upcoming sports match against their rival. When it came time for my friend to provide information about our own schools rivalry, they just shrugged and said Everyones our rival. That sentiment was true for Mario as well, at least during the classic years of the Character Battles. While his rivalry with Crono might be his most obvious and iconic, Mario had areputation in the early years of the contests, and just as controversy followed him in those years, so did a string of rivals. You wouldnt believe it if youd only started following contests post 2006 or so, but Mario was the closest that GameFAQS had to a real villain in the early years. While Marios defeat of Samus in 05 wasnt disputed in any way like some of his other matches, the result had still produced a wealth of bad feelings across the board. Feelings that would eventually dissipate over the course of time. Or, so we thought.

As the years turned into a decade (or two), much of the frenzied chaos of the early contests died away. As the Contest Fanbase stabilized and grew older, we all (for the most part) mellowed out, and learned not to put quite so much emotional investment into the results of an online video game character popularity contest. This helped avoid and dial down the recriminations and grudges that had haunted the classic era, but at the same time, the excitement and thrills of that era had proved hard to recapture as well. The first handful of nailbiters we ever saw, the first matches with comebacks, those all loom large in the boards memory, their legacy undeniable, and they all placed highly on this list. But after 15 years of matches, after all weve seen, would the same match have the same effect? Would DK/Vercetti make my Top 50 if it happened today? Probably not. Weve gone over the same ground so many times, that a match needs something special to stand out nowadays. Theres a rawness to the early matches thats hard to get, and which by 2018 we had come to believe was gone for good. The 2018 Contest, however, ended up exceeding our relatively modest expectations, and when all was said and done would end up being a perfect capper on Character Battle history. There werent the same number of all-time matches with high stakes as in some of our other classic contests, but what we got was a contest that was entertaining and surprising in its own right. We got the closure we needed after five years of rallies, and for a brief moment in the final week or two of the Legends/Losers Bracket we got a return to the excitement of the early years. After a decade of rehabilitating his image, Mario would make a heel turn once more and prove that he had some controversy left in him. Mario the Villain was back, for one final time.

As soon as the Legends Bracket was released, it was clear that Mario and Samus would be having at least one run-in. In theory, this was nothing to get excited about. We had had the debate about the Nintendo hierarchy a decade earlier, and we had seen how it had all turned out. Still, there was something in the air in 2018, that made people hope, if not very confidently, that this time might be different. We were older, more refined, did we really still care about hierarchies that much? Mario had a fairly strong victory over Sephiroth in the first round of the Legends Bracket, avenging his own losses from previous years, and going into the first match with Samus, he was the clear favorite. As expected, Mario won the match, but one element would end up being unexpected. It was close. Mario had remained in control of the match for the whole time, but he only won with 51%, and Samus had even started to make a small run on him in the closing hours. This changed everything. Samus had lost, but there was an extremely good chance that the two would meet up again, and shed get a second chance to pull off the upset. We would see Mega Man reverse a loss to Pikachu the following day, and Mario hadnt won by that much, so wasnt a narrow Samus win a possibility in the rematch? Whatever had caused Marios blowout in 2005, call it SFF or rSFF, it had clearly faded with time. You dont always get a second chance to win an argument, but the people on the losing side of one of the biggest debates in contest history were suddenly on the verge of getting a second chance to win theirs. Finally, 13 years later, a match between Mario and Samus would be decided by raw strength. The only question remaining was, which one was stronger?

We would get our answer 6 days later, when the rematch commenced, and over the course of the week leading up to it, the board turned on Mario in a major way. All that anger and resentment that had been directed towards him for the first several years of the contests was back, and Mario was once again someone whose loss was greatly anticipated. It turned out that maybe we hadt quite gotten over our old grudges after all. This energy and excitement carried over into the rematch, which got off to a narrow start, the two Nintendo icons going 50/50 with each other for the first two hours of the poll. Considering that Mario had done better with the Early Vote in their first match, this only boded well for Samuss chances as the match went on. Eventually, as the Night Vote kicked in, Samus gained the momentum and slowly started to build a lead. As the night grew later, her lead began to reach triple digits, and while she was far from out of the woods yet, we were seeing the first sign that the dream might actually be happening, and that the Nintendo hierarchy might finally be dead. Mario would strike back with the Morning Vote however, tearing down Samuss lead and building up a triple digit one of his own.This was the kind of back and forth between contest elites that we had lived for once upon a time, and which had been in short supply over the past decade. People were actually excited and angry and arguing about a match, and not because there was some rally with existential stakes happening. This was all being done over a good, old-fashioned nailbiter. There was something at stake of course, but it was something constructive, not destructive.

Just like she had done in the first match, Samus would come back with the Afternoon Vote, bringing the match 50/50 with just five and a half hours to go. And for those five and a half hours, the match would remain 50/50, swinging back and forth as each character would go on a run, then stop as the other character swooped in, cancelled out the run and went on one of their own. The only question left to answer was who would have the final run.

Do you even have to ask? If this match marked the return of Evil Mario, it would obviously end, as those matches always did, with Mario pulling out a clutch to win, this time by a mere 19 votes. Mario would have, in the end, one final trick up his sleeve. We were all angry of course, but honestly, could this have ever ended any other way? Deep down, if we had known we would likely never have a Character Battle ever again, that this would be our last all-timer match, would we want it to end any other way? The Last Great Contest Match had finally come to a close.

This is the match that I mentioned i thought is way too high personally, no offense meant.

I think a combination of it being a losers bracket match and it having abysmal votals prevents it from being that high for me. The match probably isn't too close either if votals aren't that small, I think Mario looks at better then. I mean yeah it was a nice enough end to it all, but this is a very high spot!

Super biased because my bracket was on the line but that's my #2 all time. It was unbelievably tense.

I think for me tension just wouldn't reach the same highs as when board was filled with topics. Mind you, I very much enjoyed the match and and the contest as a whole, but 16th is really high!

Yeah, I kinda agree this match is probably too high, but I understand it. I think the ranking would be justified if Samus had won.

Probably yeah. But I was not a fan of losers bracket in general. One match flipped but only due to double count voting anyway. Maybe if you didn't meet the same opponents but yeah.

It felt like a match to see who would lose to Zelda. While it was a pleasure for me you wouldn't have believed ten years earlier to see Cloud win it, it still didn't feel like a big deal since anything there should be contributed to the next match, and while Samus winning would have been cooler, it required a mix of low votals ans losers bracket and that took some of my enjoyment and excitement away.

Yeah, the loser's bracket was poorly laid out so we saw a lot of rematches, which was a bummer.

Also I think Mario has been a bit of a fraud since...maybe 2008? 2010 at the latest. We haven't seen peak Mario in a very long time. There was just no way to definitively show it because you could always blame something else. He didn't really face a scenario that could clearly expose him until 2018.

If only Samus had beaten Mario in the re-match. If that had happened we would have been able to see if Samus was capable of beating Cloud. Was Mario really "exposed" in 2018, though? He was about on par with Snake and Cloud... Were expectations higher for Mario?

I still wonder about Samus's true strength. Since there's little doubt Snake would beat Tifa with more than 53%, either Samus vs. Tifa was the anomaly, or Samus vs. Snake (or both). There are reasons to be either one could be the case. Tifa had overperformed against Samus years ago (in 2006, where Samus had a pic disadvantage), and Samus appeared to overperform against Snake in that same contest. I would place my bet on Samus vs. Snake being the anomaly in 2018, though.

The anomaly was Mario/Samus imhotbqh

And there was a debate for a while whether Mario was the second strongest character on the site, even back before Cloud and Seph really fell off. I felt like he never was and was consistently overrated, but he always had excuses for why he underperformed.

If Cloud had beaten the pulp out of Mario in Loser's Bracket, maybe Mario could be considered a fraud, but less than 150 votes from beating Cloud in the Loser's Bracket just validates Samus way more than it says anything bad about Mario.

Nah, the fact that Mario lost to Zelda and Cloud post-Odyssey when people speculated he could beat Cloud in 2010 is a bad showing relative to that expectation.

I think Samus beats Cloud with at least 52%.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3852-final-rounds-quarterfinal-samus-aran-vs-cloud-strife

Look how close she was in 2010!

I'm just gonna go back to Magus/Knuckles for a second for a second, and say I remember when I checked the results I looked at it and was surprised that Magus was winning by so little. But something didn't look right, so I stared at it for about 30 seconds before my brain registered that Knuckles was actually the one who was winning. I thought it was such a foregone conclusion that my brain didn't even register what I was looking at. Then I just laughed for like a minute straight.

Also, was there ever a board contest for the best ever match pics?

15. Mario vs. Crono (2002) R5

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/96b608e7.jpg

Mario 50.05% 53831
Crono 49.95% 53716
TOTAL VOTES 107547
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs_(5)Crono_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1000-tournament-semifinal-mario-vs-crono

The question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object found an answer in this match: it creates the most definitive rivalry in Contest History. This legendary rivalry would begin with two characters who, while they might have shared momentum, had managed to make it to this point with diametrically opposed backstories. Mario was the big favorite, the obvious winner who had looked shaky early on, but who had managed to get to this point seemingly by sheer brute force of will. Crono was someone who many expected to lose in the Second Round, but who had defied the odds and beat gaming icon after gaming icon on his way to the Final Four. Sometimes when you get a showdown between contest elites, one or both of them is not at the top of their game. That was not the case here. Both Mario and Crono were coming off of huge waves of momentum going into this match, and while Marios strength might have peaked with his match the round before, what he was working with here was still ahead of what he looked like in the earliest rounds. Crono of course, seemingly got more and more popular as the contest went on, most likely peaking with this very match. And so you had two characters, in the midst of two different journeys meeting up to decide which one would make the Finals. Even if Mario and Cronos story together ended here, it would be a story that would be hard to beat.

While the board was mostly rooting for Crono all the way at this point, most people, when pushed, would concede that the match was Marios to lose. In most peoples minds he had already overcome his biggest obstacle the previous round when he had defeated Cloud to win the North Division. The appeal behind another intense match in the Nintendo Vs. Square rivalry was obvious, but Crono was considered a step down from Cloud popularity wise. If the former couldnt take on Mario, how could Crono be expected to? The match started, and while Mario was in the lead from the very beginning, it quickly became clear that Crono was not yet done surprising us. As Midnight turned into Night, and Night turned into Day, Mario would remain ahead, but not by much, Crono nipping at his heels the entire time. This was in an era before we understood things like Vote Trends, and which characters were supposed to do better in which time period. Anything was possible, and the board sat with bated breath, waiting to see when and if either of these two would make a move. But neither did. Mario kept plodding along hour after hour, adding to his lead narrowly but consistently, and by 6:00 PM, he had managed to build up a roughly 1200 vote lead. In later contests with a 12/1 AM start time, these final six hours or so would be a moment when things mostly (emphasis on *mostly*) start to die down. If a comeback hadnt started yet, it probably wasnt going to, and in any case, coming back by 1,000+ votes at this point was a bridge too far, even in the most extreme of circumstances. 2002 was built different, however. This time frame was when most of the big comebacks of the contest had occurred, and as the minutes ticked by, it was up to Crono to show whether or not he would be the next character to close things out with an epic run.

He would. With only a quarter of the match left to go, Crono began coming back, tearing down the lead faster than Mario had built it up. In a role reversal from what we had seen in the previous round, Mario was now the one facing down a quickly evaporating lead, holding on for dear life as his opponent went on a legendary tear. Hour by hour, Crono cut off votes, eventually bringing the match close to 50/50 with only two hours to go. And then, for the first time ever in contest history, Ceej arrived to tell us that he had found a cheater. And despite what everyone at the time might have assumed, they were not cheating for Mario. Someone had managed to set up a voting script for Crono, and as a result, Crono would see 490 votes removed from his total right as he was on the cusp of taking the lead. Mario fans would erupt in cheers, but only temporarily. Even without the stuffed votes, Cronos momentum was building, and in no time at all, he close the remaining distance between himself and the Nintendo icon. With only an hour or two left to go in the poll, Crono had taken the lead. We were on the verge of seeing the upset of the contest, we were about to see Mario finally fall. Mario wouldnt go down without a fight however, and for the limited amount of time left in the poll, the two would trade places back and forth, every update seeing a new character in the lead. In the penultimate update, with only 15 minutes to go, Crono would just barely be up, holding at 50.03%. Would that be enough to hold on until the end?

No, as it turned out, it would not. In what would become an increasingly common event, Mario would pull out a strong final update, and end up just barely winning himself in the end. Crono had proved his strength beyond any reasonable standard of doubt, but in the end, Mario would be the one making the finals, not him. The battle had been won, but, as Im sure you all know, the war was far from over. These two characters would meet again and again in a series of clashes, one a year for the next four straight years, the ups and downs of those results serving as a mirror to the site itself. Their rivalry was always rooted in the characters, but it is hard not to see the parallels as well to the overall Nintendo Vs. Square battle for dominance over the soul of the site. Just because both of these battles ended up with definitive winners however, doesnt make them all the less legendary. There are many questions of opinion that can be asked about the contests, and they all produce a variety of answers, all questions except one: What is the greatest contest rivalry? The answer to that question is, quite simply, Mario and Crono. There is almost nothing else that compares. The showdowns themselves and the narrative that they produced. And it all started with this match.

This match was incredible and is my personal number one. Its questionable results created a need for revenge and tuning into future contests to see what would happen. Not only was this match absurdly close when it had no business being so, but it also set the standard for being emotionally invested in the matches.

You accidentally wrote Samus by the total votes.

ctesjbuvf posted...

You accidentally wrote Samus by the total votes.

Thank you! Changed.

It would've been neat if Crono had won because we would've gotten cleaner X-Stats

14. Chrono Trigger vs. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Sp2004) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/eeb9a152.jpg

Chrono Trigger 50.18% 49494
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 49.82% 49132
TOTAL VOTES 98626
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Chrono_Trigger_vs_(6)The_Legend_of_Zelda:_A_Link_to_the_Past_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1658-division-final-chrono-trigger-vs-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link

Dividing the first two Games Contests by era is generally regarded as a mistake. It placed restrictions on which games could get in, generated a lot of SFF matches, and removed suspense from later rounds in many regions of the bracket. There were a handful of bright spots to that format however. Longstanding rivalries got to play out on a bigger stage, some series got multiple opportunities to shine, etc. One of those bright spots was, of course, this match, the finals of the 16 Bit Division. From the very beginning, this matchup has hyped. Two of the definitive games of their era, classics by any stretch of the imagination, facing off in a Square vs. Nintendo battle for the ages. Rather than everything settling into a comfortable mediocrity, everything in the 16 Bit Divison had fallen into place for an alltimer of a match, an answer to a generational question that had been debated for over 10 years. It was also, in many ways, the last stand for the Zelda series in this contest. While the All Zelda Final Four had been hyped up and memed since the First Round of the contest, we were on the verge of seeing all four Zelda games eliminated virtually back to back in the space of five days. LttP would not be the last Zelda game remaining; that honor would go to Ocarina of Time on the following day. OoTs chances against FFVII were considered quite slim at this point though, and if the Zelda series wanted to have an entry make it to the final rounds, LttP was considered its best chance. In other words, for Nintendo fans all over the site, there was a lot riding on this match.

Going into the contest, both of these games were given pretty good odds to win the Division, however, despite the initial Zelda hype, by the time match rolled around Chrono Trigger had emerged as the favorite. Both games had been expected to win their previous matches by roughly the same amount, but the actual results could not have been more different. Chrono Trigger smashed Super Mario World with ease in a 60/40 victory that would hide the latter games popularity for years. Link to the Past on the other hand had had its hands full with FFVI, having to rely on the Day Vote to put the Squaresoft classic away. After Kefkas bomb in the 03 Contest, the board had gone sour on FFVIs popularity vis-a-vis Chrono Triggers, and if LttP struggled to put away the former, it would almost certainly face an uphill battle against Chrono Trigger itself. That was the logic at least, and while people were still expecting a reasonably close match between the two of them, most people were fairly sanguine about Chrono Triggers chances.

The match started and initially at least the pre-match predictions held out. Chrono Trigger got off to a close but relatively safe early lead, staying above 54% for the first hour or two. Things started to slow down for it though as we reached the nadir of the First Night Vote, CT still increasing its lead, but starting to sink in percentage as we neared the beginning of the Day Vote. It would gradually build up its lead to 500 votes by 7:00 AM, but almost as soon as it reached that number, the kiddies would start waking up, and LttP would use the Morning Vote to come back, taking votes off the lead bit by bit throughout the day. As we hit midday, just past noon EST, Zelda would complete the job, pulling into a dead heat with CT, the vote sitting at 50/50 for each game. And then, for the next 10 hours it would stay there, frozen in place as the board was the exact opposite, convulsing in excitement, waiting for one of the games to make its move. But no move would come, the two games trading the lead back and forth for hours on end, the lead barely rising above the single digits. LttP would make a bit of a run with the ASV, but even that lead stalled out at just under 200 votes, Chrono Trigger quickly taking it all back by evening and setting into place another endless stallfest. The barely kept secret of course was how the match would end. We all assumed that Chrono Trigger would finish well as it and its characters usually did, so the onus was on LttP to put enough daylight between itself and its opponent to withstand what would be coming later on. The main source of tension throughout this endless day was whether or not the Zelda game had enough juice left to build up any kind of substantial lead that could stand up against the upcoming Night Vote.

And in the end, it did not. The two games remained locked in a stalemate all through the early evening, until around 10 PM EST, when finally, finally, one of them would take control of the match. Chrono Trigger would win the Second Night Vote decisively as we all expected and that would be just enough to put it over the top, squeaking through into the Seminfals, and as we all expected, the Finals as well.

Chrono Trigger and its characters would go on to have many successes after this match. Hell, Frog hadnt even made his contest debut yet. Even so, this match was in many ways CTs high water mark on the site. It had faced down the top Zelda/Nintendo game in its generation, and come out of the battle alive. It would go on to put up a good fight in the Finals as well, establishing itself as the #3 game on the site. The next Games Contest in 2009 would not be a successful one for Chrono Trigger, even with the game finally being released in Europe, and while it looked strong in Best.Game.Ever. III, it would ultimately be overwhelmed by one of the contests rallies, its true potential unfulfilled. And so it is left for this match to secure the legacy of Chrono Trigger the game, and in its victory it managed to do so, while at the same time providing one of the most entertaining matches in contest history.

I remember being transfixed on this match as the 50/50 deadlock went on and on for hours

This is probably a top ten match for me

An amazing match. I was also surprised that LttP did so well (I, like much of the board, expected it to get around 48%). Im still not sure how it did so well given its struggle against FFIII. Regardless, one of the better matches for sure.

Actually, looking at the LttP / FFIII result again, I understand why it did so well. Still, I remember thinking CT would handily win. I think I even had FFIII in my bracket over LttP, I wonder what the consensus on that match was.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Despite never getting past round 2, Knuckles absolutely refuses to fold in round 1, almost always killing Square, even the one time he did bow out in round 1. His eliminated Square RPG charcater vs. character battle ratio is 1:1!

I have forgot exactly what is left, but this to me should be a top 2 round 1 match. Certain the other one I'm thinking of is still left.

Actually, it's even higher, because in both 2007 and 2013 he knocked out two Square characters. So he's beaten 10 Square characters in 9 Character Battles.

I did count correctly, my point in that post was that he had beaten a Square character per contest despite missing a contest.

In hindsight it's great to see Zelda lose, but if I was around at the time, I probably would have been pissed Ocarina lost.

I mean Ocarina of Time deserves to win everything, but if it lost to, say, Chrono Trigger, I would still be smiling like a villain who's proud of the hero for overcoming him.

Leonhart4 posted...

It would've been neat if Crono had won because we would've gotten cleaner X-Stats

I know, right? Granted, if Crono beat Mario he probably would have overperformed a bit on Link. Too many mysteries... How strong was Cloud, really, in 2002? Did Sephiroth overperform on Link, or did he underperform against Samus, or neither? Was Link 2002 anywhere near his 2003 popularity?

Edit: here's an entertaining interpretation: if you measure Link from Mega Man using Mega Man's 2003 x-stat, Link is at 44.98% in 2002. If you measure Cloud from Alucard using Alucard's 2003 x-stat, Cloud is at 45.39%. So Cloud 2002 beats Link 2002! (just kidding)

13. Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Crono (2006) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5d18ec5e.jpg

Sonic the Hedgehog 50.77% 64027
Crono 49.23% 62087
TOTAL VOTES 126114
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Sonic_the_Hedgehog_vs_(1)Crono_2006
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2558-tournament-quarterfinal-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-crono

Going into 2006, a controversy was swirling through the Noble Nine. The concept was premised, at least partly, on the idea that the group of characters within it were unbeatable to everyone else in the bracket, and only beatable to themselves. As the years went on, it became harder and harder to ignore that the two weak links of the group (Snake and Sonic), while above the rest of the bracket, had actually never beaten another Noble Nine Character themselves. And this wasnt a recent development; it had been the state of play since the end of 2003. What made these two different than say, Vincent? Their presence in the group was starting to become premised more on vibes than on actual contest results. Both of them had looked pretty good in 2005, but when in came to intra-Noble Nine struggles the two of them had yet to finish the deal. The Noble Nine had, in many peoples minds begun to calcify into a group of three tiers: Link, Cloud, Sephiroth at the top, Mario, Samus, Crono, Mega Man in the middle, and then Sonic and Snake bringing up the rear. Yes, I know that Sonic had almost beaten Mega Man the year before, but when it came to the Noble Nine, almost wasnt good enough. There was some deal of debate when the bracket for 2006 came out, but aside from a healthy argument about whether Samus or Crono would win the Main Bracket, the previously stated tiers held. For the Male Bracket we would see: Mega Man > Snake, Crono > Sonic, and then Crono > Mega Man, just like the year before. The order of everyone had been set in stone, or so we thought. Little did we know that we were on the verge of the greatest reordering of the Noble Nine since the early years of the Contests.

From the beginning, we realized that something was off in the Male Bracket. Mega Man in particular was one of our first objects of interest. While he had grown to have a reputation as Mr. Consistency in these things, in match after match he was underperforming, while Snake, who the Blue Bomber had already beaten twice, managed to hit his marks every single time. An upset in the making was brewing, and eager for some excitement in a contest we had low expectations for, the board began speculating on a narrow Snake upset. And then there was Crono. It wasnt so much that Cronos performances were as bad as Megas, but he had started to develop a nasty habit of collapsing completely as the match went on. Whether it was due to the shift in the time the polls started or because of the arrival of a new group of casual voters, he had the misfortune in match after match of starting off very strong for the first hour or two, and then seeing his lead completely collapse throughout the remaining 22-23 hours of the match. His initial results werent setting off any red flags, but his Vote Trends were beginning to make people speculate as to how big a lead hed need to get on Sonic in their upcoming showdown. And then, in his Third Round match with Auron, he had a legitimately bad result. Crono could only manage to break 54% against someone he was supposed to beat much more easily. And much like before, while he started out 60/40ing his opponent, he collapsed over the course of the day, struggling to even beat Auron outright during the ASV. On the heels of both this performance, as well as Mega Mans equally underwhelming victory over Sora two days prior, the predictable Male Bracket was thrown into chaos, and Snake and Sonic were on the verge of pulling off back to back upsets. While it had been swirling around in the background for the past 2-3 years, it suddenly looked like the problem with the Noble Nine could be solved in the span of just two days.

As Ive written about previously, when it came time for Snake to do his part he did so with ease, defeating Mega Man by a large enough margin to make himself the favorite to win the Main Bracket. Despite Cronos bomb in the previous round though, Sonic still had his work cut out for him. Snake had managed to draw Mega Man into a statistical tie prior to their match, but when it came to Sonic/Crono, the board stubbornly continued to back Crono. The Oracle numbers were a bit closer than previously predicted, but Crono remained the favorite all the same. The anticipation of an upset was in our hearts, but we couldnt yet bring ourselves to logically believe it. The match started, and as expected Crono got off to an early lead. He remained very consistent in the early going, at just over 54% for the first several hours. One hour in, his lead broke 1,000, two hours in, he was at 1,500. This was, by any previous estimation, a very good place to be. But still, Cronos previous matches this year remained in the back of our minds, a nagging doubt that all of this early lead might not be enough. If Crono fell off by as much as he had beenit might not be enough. He needed to build up a firewall during this period, and while he had a decent sized cushion going, he was still facing the prospect of a 50/50 result once the Day Vote rolled in and erased it all. He had to keep pushing. Three and a half hours in, the lead broke 2,000, eventually peaking at just over 2,220 votes a couple hours later. If Sonic wanted to win, hed have to overcome a bigger deficit than any other match winner in history. The opportunity was there, but his chances of taking it were slowly slipping away.

And then, as the match reached the peak of the First Night Vote, Cronos collapse would begin. Sonic took off a couple hundred votes in an hour or two, a very worrying sign, but Crono struck back somewhat with the Morning Vote. His percentage would continue to collapse, but Crono would manage to limit things to a stall, keeping his lead at just under 2,000 votes for a couple of hours. Sonic would be coming back, that was no longer in doubt, but it was now just on Crono to hold off that moment for as long as possible. By 10:30/11:00 AM, his strength would finally give out and Crono would be forced to lower his guard, allowing Sonic to take control of the match for good and unleash one of the most memorable comebacks in contest history. Sonic would make cuts quickly and steadily all throughout the midday, people rapidly calculating afer each one to see at what time Soinc would be expected to take the lead, and whether or not Crono would have any time left to reverse things in the polls final hours. And then the ASV arrived, and all those calculations and all the bargaining from Crono fans would go completely out the window. Sonic was dominating the period as much as Crono had dominated the early going, cutting down the lead by near 100 votes in a single update at times. This wasnt a comeback so much as a complete reversal, and all of the speculation about a down to the wire result came to nothing as Sonic would instead breeze into the lead by 4:20 PM, with hours and hours to spare. Sonic wouldnt stop there however. He would keep going, up to the very end of the match, eventually winning by 1,940 votes, a roughly 4,000 vote shift from earlier in the day. For the first, and only, time in contest history, Sonic had beaten another member of the Noble Nine.

This match would symbolize the beginning of the end for Crono, who would go on to suffer a series of unfortunate upsets and reversals in the following years, and even Sonics triumph would end up being short lived, his popularity collapsing just one year later. While the boards sentiment has always leaned unwaveringly towards Crono, it was hard not to take some kind of joy in the momentousness of this result, along with the one from the day before. The Noble Nine had finally each beaten one of the other members, and the increasingly static ordering of its lineup had been shaken up for good. It was hard not to feel like we were at a turning point for the Contests after this point, albeit in what direction was still unclear. Thanks to some of the Main Brackets final results, the Noble Nine now formed a circular chain of victories with: Link > Sephiroth > Samus > Snake > Mega Man > Sonic > Crono > Mario > Cloud > Link > Sephiroth The Noble Nine was now joined together in a way that they had never been before and it was appropriate that this would happen in this year, in a contest, that marked the end of one era of contest history, the other era just beyond the horizon in 2007.