The 128 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time - The Top 64

Thank God Cube didn't win. I love Portal, but two joke winners in a row probably would have killed a LOT of people's interest in the contests. I know it would have killed mine.

52. Cloud Strife vs. Mario (2018) LB

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5cd6e07b.jpg

Cloud Strife 50.24% 14667
Mario 49.76% 14526
TOTAL VOTES 29193
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(4)Cloud_Strife_vs_(7)Mario_(Losers_Bracket)_2018
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7385-loser-bracket-semifinal-cloud-vs-mario

Ive written before that even though it wasnt intended to be one, 2018 feels like a final contest in a lot of ways. And in terms of it being the final chapter of the GameFAQS Contest story (with GOTD2 as a little Epilogue), you could honestly do a lot worse. There was a real sentiment, in hindsight at least, of things being wrapped up by the time it was finished. The Noble Nine gets celebrated with the Legends Bracket, then gets solidly broken during it. Alucards plan finally comes to fruition. Characters both old (Pikachu) and new (Geralt) get to show off their future potential. Mario has one more screwy match with Samus. The embodiment of all our offsite invaders (Draven) gets ground to dust. Not all of that concludes things with perfect finality of course, the best endings never do, but what 2018 did do was give us a sense of closure. And there might be no better embodiment of that closure than this match.

I cant write too much about Mario and Clouds history without getting into a match that will show up much much later in the list, but it should suffice to say that these two had history. For 18 years, Cloud had been waiting for his revenge, and if the best revenge is living well he had already achieved it. The days when Cloud could actually lose to Mario seemed like ancient history post-2003, and while a rematch between the two of them, and Cloud reversing his previous loss, held a very obvious appeal, the gap between the two of them was so large at this point that such a match also seemed like a waste. We wanted to see Cloud have another chance to win, but at the same time, we also wanted to have a good match. And while Cloud found great success, the 2002 loss was left sitting there, not avenged. Years went by, and over time Clouds popularity started to drop. Cloud/Mario was once again a potentially nailbiting affair, but at the same time, the result was little in doubt. Any time FFVII was in any danger of losing a match, a flood of ralliers would show up and make sure that it did. In year after year, match after match, the balance of power shifted inexorably against FFVII, and while its characters remained strong, their ability to pull out a clutch had withered away to almost nothing. And against Mario, Cloud would need a clutch.

By 2018 however, we had reached a kind of equilibrium, and Clouds fortunes were on the rise. The site had moved past anti-voting someone just because they were a favorite and Cloud had recently appeared in Smash 4, broadening/updating his fanbase. While his popularity had suffered massive reversals over the previous decades, there was actually a chance that this year he could make the Finals with Link yet again, just like in old times. And, after two matches in the Legends Bracket, Cloud did meet up with Link again, lost as predicted, and was thrown into the Losers Bracket, where he would eventually come face to face with his nemesis: Mario. Despite the partial rehab of Clouds reputation, Mario remained the favorite to win this match, with all but four people predicting him to win in the Oracle Challenge. And when the match started, thats what happened. Mario would jump out to a narrow lead, but unlike his fellow Nintendo characters he didnt collapse after the Power Hour. His percentage dropped as the night went on, but Mario would slowly extend his lead all throughout the evening hours, despite some runs from Cloud here and there, still adding to it well past midnight. Cloud, normally strongest at night, would take until 2:00 AM EST to start coming back in earnest, and with the reduced votals and the frontloaded nature of matches in 2018, the comeback was a plodding, sluggish one, bringing Mario down below 50.2%, but at such a slow rate that Mario was able to quickly recover once the Day Vote kicked in, pushing him back up over 50.5% again in just a couple of hours. If Mario kept this up for just a little more, the match would be his.

But there was something different about Cloud this year. This wasnt the FFVII we had seen for years and years by this point, which would put up a spirited comeback at first, but then fail to get over the hump when truly tested. This year, Cloud was going to fight back all the way to the end. Marios Morning Vote success would only last two or three hours, and by midday Cloud was cutting off votes again. Bit by bit, he started coming back, inching closer and closer to the lead, and by mid-afternoon, with only four and a half hours left in the poll, he pulled past Mario. And then, in response, Mariodid nothing. There was no last minute Final Fantasy always wins anti-rally, no clutch from Mario. Cloud just took the lead, and spent the next several hours adding to it, holding on all the way to the end. 16 years later, he had finally done it. He had gotten revenge on Mario, and had done it in a close match when the odds were against him to boot. The circle had finally closed. Cloud would have another comeback win over Cinderella Run Zelda the next day, and then finish things off with one final Finals Match against Link the day after that. After all the upheaval on the site over the last decade, the final Character Battle we will likely ever see still, in the end, came down to Link Vs. Cloud. As it once was, so shall it always be.

It is kind of wild that we never had Cloud vs. Mario 1-on-1 again before 2018, but I'm glad Cloud finally got his revenge at the very end.

Actually, looking at it, the only time we saw Cloud and Mario in the same match at all between 2002 and 2018 was the 2006 Battle Royal, where they were both already predetermined to be there. They never met in any of the multi-way contests.

51. Frog vs. Solid Snake (2004) R3

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e752ec38.jpg

Frog 48.61% 42563
Solid Snake 51.39% 44992
TOTAL VOTES 87555
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(6)Frog_vs_(2)Solid_Snake_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1769-20xx-division-semifinal-frog-vs-solid-snake

*Frogs Theme plays.* Despite having multiple entries on this list overall, this is my first write-up for Frog, which says a lot about how iconic all of his memorable matches are. Theres a reason why his theme is the definitive one to play during a close contest match! Ill get more into the pre-contest expectations for Frog in a later writeup, but for now Ill just say that Frogs 2004 had been full of ups and downs. He had had big disappointments as well as big successes, and this mixed bag of reactions extended to the expectations for this match. There was a general consensus that Frog would go out with respectable, but not earth-shattering numbers, getting around 40% against Snake, who himself was coming off of a previous two rounds of mixed results. But beneath that acceptance there was an undercurrent of hope. Magus Vs. Snake had been built up in our minds as one of *the* Noble Nine breaking matches, and this match was a proxy for that. No one really thought that Frog would win or even come close, but there was a transfer of energy that seemed to take place, flowing from Frogs previous two wins (and Maguss potential one) into our hopes for him in this match.

And those hopes got a boost before the match even started, once the picture for the match was finally revealed. Round 3 of 2004 would mark the debut of a contest mainstay: The Sprite Round.* And on top of that, this match would feature another debut, one of the most infamous bits of character art to ever make a match pic: Solid Shit. As a character whose appeal, especially at this time, was based on being the epitome of cool, to be forced to receive a blurry mass of pixels was an instant disadvantage for Snake, and would cause his performance to drop accordingly. Snake had received a sprite picture once before, but for whatever the reason, it hadnt had much effect. For every other year and every other Sprite Round going forward, things would be different. And to pile shit on top of shit, the sprite that debuted this year might have been the worst one of them all, a bunch of browns and greens that are barely recognizable as a human being. And he was going up against a character from a game with some of the most beloved sprite art of all time.

The match started and the momentum that Frog had built up in his previous two matches carried him to an early lead, continuing the strength that Chrono Trigger characters had long shown with the Board Vote. Within 15 minutes, Snake had taken the lead back though, and within an hour or two had managed to build his percentage up to near 54%. Frog seemed set to beat his pre-match expectations, but this particular match was expected to be kind of front loaded for him, so one might assume that Snake still had a percentage or more to go. He wouldnt get to 60%, but hed go up a little bit. But then, as the match went on, Snake stopped going up. His lead was still increasing, but his percentage was stabilizing somewhere between 53 and 54%. Then the Day Vote arrived, and, somehow, Snakes situation got even worse. He started bleeding percentage consistently, and once the ASV kicked in, Frog would occasionally make cuts into the lead as well. The kiddies had woken up, and against all odds the Day Vote was being won by a secondary character from a Super Nintendo RPG from 1995. Snake was never in any danger of losing the match, but he probably looked as bad as he possibly could have without doing so. And to rub it in even more, once the Second Night Vote arrived, Frog went on one final tear, cutting off 400 or so votes, and bringing Snake below 51.5%, a shocking figure.

While he might have lost the match, Frog came away from it looking like a winner. This was the kind of fight that Magus was supposed to give Snake, not his weaker cousin, someone who had just two rounds earlier barely beaten *Liquid* Snake. In any case, despite the fact that Snake had been assigned the wrong Chrono Trigger character, he had blown it all the same, and this match would become, at the time, the closest the Noble Nine had ever come to being broken. Sonic had actually been behind Ryu for an hour or two in Round 2 earlier in the contest, but he had recovered and won by an acceptable margin in the end. This match however, was the first real evidence we had been given that the Noble Nine could be beaten. Snake had been on defense for almost the entire match, and that was something we would never forget.

*The theme of Round 3 in 2003 was technically First In-Game Appearance

Frogs matches almost make me forget how boring Sc2k4 was overall.

It's kind of hilarious that many of us came away from 2004 thinking Magus and Frog were just a step below Crono and Liquid Snake was just a step below Solid Snake

Also yeah, SC2K4 was rough. So many 80%+ blowouts.

I still say the one thing that saved Snake in 2004 was that Frog's sprite looked like shit too (or rather like a giant booger holding a sword).

Yeah, 2004 wasn't a good contest, but it does still have that "classic contest" feel.

Not really sure how much the sprite affected Snake, at least relative to low vote turnout and a bandwagon behind Frog.

Frog really carries that contest

The entire Chaos Division was pretty fun too.

Underleveled posted...

The entire Chaos Division was pretty fun too.

Well, you had some interesting results there but not any particularly close matches.

Also Link beating Ganondorf worse than CATS is still an all-time result

Leonhart4 posted...

Well, you had some interesting results there but not any particularly close matches.

Also Link beating Ganondorf worse than CATS is still an all-time result

Actually one match there briefly held the record for closest match of all time.

Oh right, Hayabusa/Jill was in that division.

50. Gordon Freeman vs. Tina Armstrong (2002) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3a229669.jpg

Gordon Freeman 40.03% 22560
Tina Armstrong 59.97% 33801
TOTAL VOTES 56361
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(3)Gordon_Freeman_vs_(14)Tina_Armstrong_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/953-east-division-round-1-gordon-freeman-vs-tina-armstrong

There are four rules to GFNW:

1. Gordon Freeman Never Wins
2. The characters he loses to will have a very generic first and last sounding name.
3. Despite losing, Gordon Freeman will always break 40%.
4. See Rule Number 1.

Is there any character whose popularity on the board is more closely contest linked than Gordon Freeman? Sure, Frogs legacy of contest matches has added a new dimension to his support, but he would clearly be well liked without all of that. Gordon Freeman, on the other hand, almost feels like an original character from the contests themselves. The appeal he holds over all of us, the reason hes made every single Character Battle, oftentimes with a higher seed than his popularity at the time would entail, is pretty much solely due to his performances in them. People might like Half-Life, but the reason why the Board loves Gordon is due to a meme, the most popular meme in contest history: Gordon Freeman Never Wins.

There was something undeniably entertaining and impressive about the fact that this random character would make it in every year and basically follow a series of rules that were all established in his first match. And despite the fact that the rules were all premised on Gordon Freeman always losing, they would feature impressive feats as well. Like breaking 40% in every loss. After 2005, the fourth Character Battle, there were only four non-Clinkeroth characters who had made every contest and never fallen below 40%. They were: Snake, Kirby, Ryuand Gordon Freeman. And to make this even more absurd he would keep doing this against progressively stronger opponents. And also impressively, he would would have a huge chunk, often a majority, of brackets behind him. This weird mix of success and, at the same time, constant failure is what GFNW was all about, and in the classic years of the contests, it was the biggest meme we had.

A meme, which all started with this match. Yes, I know that Amazing Telephone came up with the term in 2003 during his match with Max Payne, but while it might have been named later, the concept that GFNW refers to started back here, and out of all Gordons losses this has to have been the most ridiculous. There were some odd results in 2002, but this one might just be one of the oddest, and even early on in 2002 there was a lot of head scratching. Just one more notch in TJFs favor, we all guessed. GameFAQS, especially at this time, has never entirely embraced PC games, but even so, its one thing for Gordon Freeman to be weaker than youd expect and its another for him to be in danger of losing to (or to be more precise, barely break 40% against) a second-tier character from a second-tier fighting game series. Especially when, as we saw in Sp2004, Half-Life has a fair amount of support on the site. You might think, But Tina was stronger than we all thought, right? No, not in the least. She looked completely awful in the following round. Someone on her tier would never be able to beat the Gordon we saw in later years. But voters in 2002 were just built different I guess, and a blurry picture of a generic hot chick was enough to get nearly 60% over Mr. Freeman. Yes, out of the all his opponents during the GFNW era, *Tina Armstrong* was the one Gordon did the worst against. There was an anecdote I recall from that time of people going to a Half-Life forum to rally for Gordon Freeman, and they were met with a response of Whos Gordon Freeman? Perhaps the anonymous nature of the FPS hero had done him in in 2002, but one thing became clear as the years went on. In the contest community at least, no one would ever ask Whos Gordon Freeman? again.

Also, since I've made it to Number 50, please enjoy the Honorable Mentions, that were not quite good enough to make the Top 128.

Jill/Kirby
Link/Little Mac
Ryu/CATS
Mega Man/Serious Sam
Link/AiAi
Master Chief/Felix
Bowser/Yoshi
Mario/Shadow
Crono/Kefka
SOTN/Perfect Dark
Pong/Tetris
Tidus/Shadow
Samus/Lara
Sonic/Ryu
Robotnik/Sin
Frog/Riku
Ocelot/Pac-Man
Snake/Sora
Mario/Crono (2005)
Pokemon/Star Ocean
Pokemon/Metroid
Street Fighter/Resident Evil
Samus/Nidoran F
Link/Cloud (2006)
Alucard/Liquid Snake/Ness/Zidane
Fenix/Kefka/Cloud/Ocelot
Zack/Wario/Jade/Cecil
Duke/Kefka/Marth/Nico
L-Block/Ryu/Meta Knight/The Dog
Mario/Zelda/Mega Man X/Mudkip
Boss/Kirby/Jinjo/Lucas
Sonic/Sandbag/Auron/Sub-Zero
SMB3/Monkey Island/Sim City/Tecmo Super Bowl
SMB/Ninja Gaiden/Zelda/Metroid
Chrono Trigger/SMW2/SM64/SOTN
Pokemon RBY/Majora's Mask/Metal Gear Solid/Pokemon GSC
God of War/San Andreas/Tales of Symphonia/Oblivion
Diablo II/Halo/KOTOR/GTA III
Alucard/Magus
Kefka/Arthas
Ken/Wesker
Mario/Charizard
Cloud/Samus (2010)
Cloud/Snake (2010)
Rock Band 2/Deus Ex
Melee/Brawl
Kingdom Hearts 1/Kingdom Hearts II
Majora's Mask/GSC
Majora's Mask/Brawl
Link/Santa
Trainers/Ryu and Ken
Squall and Seifer/Sora and Riku
Tidus/Missingno/Banjo
Undertale/Ocarina
Ocarina/Hearthstone
MGS 1/MGS 3
1997/2001
Tidus/DK
Pac-Man/Sans
Squall/Zelda
Geralt/Auron
Red/Alucard
BOTW/Witcher III
Witcher III/Skyrim

Love the topics and write-ups. Dont take this the wrong way, but there is no way some of these matches belong this high up compared to some of the other ones. I appreciate that not all great matches are close, but yeah.

Huh, kinda surprised Melee/Brawl didn't make the list

Leonhart4 posted...

Huh, kinda surprised Melee/Brawl didn't make the list

That one stood out the most to me too

49. Pac-Man vs. Kefka (2003) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/90908642.jpg

Pac-Man 49.05% 45905
Kefka 50.95% 47678
TOTAL VOTES 93583
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Pac-Man_vs_(12)Kefka_2003
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1323-south-division-round-1-pac-man-vs-kefka

If there is one picture from contest history more infamous than Solid Shit, it would have to be the one that debuted in this match: Lettuce Kefka. Before it was the name of the board member who gave us Final Fantasy VII: ASCII Children, it was the only phrase we could come up with to describe what we were looking at in this match picture. But first, some backstory. If Magus was the most hyped newcomer going into 2003, than Kefka would have been the runner up. In fact, there was a Snubs Tournament on the Board after 2002, and that was the final result. While Kefka might not have loomed as large in the boards imaginary as Magus, he occupied a similar role. A fan favorite JRPG villain on a site that loved JRPGS. How could he not be strong? Also like Magus, his bracket placement was initially considered a mistake. How could someone with so much potential, and so many nominations from the board only have a 12 seed? And once again, this character with great potential was thrown up against a contest Elite almost immediately. In this case, against Crono in the Second Round. His contest journey was generally assumed to end there, but Kefka > Crono was a very sexy upset pick throughout much of the leadup to 03. His Round 1 match against Pac-Man? It wasnt considered a *complete* lock (Kefkas presumed popularity did cover a much larger range than Maguss), but much like Magus, his pre-Noble Nine opponents were not considered that worthy of discussion. Kefka would very likely beat Pac-Man without too much trouble.

Trouble began to emerge a couple days prior to the match though, when the newest batch of match pics got posted. Pac-Man looked about how youd expect, but Kefka. . .it wasnt quite clear what his picture was even supposed to be. Presumably a drawing of Kefka in a flowing, green robe, his appendages akimbo in some sort of dance, the floridity of the picture also made it hard to decipher, especially at the size and resolution the initial pic. Simple things about a human being, like say their arms and legs, or even their face were impossible to make out when it came to Kefka. If the characters name had not been displayed at the bottom of the pic, I dont think a single visitor to the site would have even recognized who it was supposed to be. It did, honestly, with only minimal exaggeration, look like a piece of lettuce. Weve had outcries over bad pics before and since, even ones that resulted in said pictures being changed, but I dont think theres ever been an uproar quite like this. Objections were raised for days leading up to the match, petitions were even made, but in the end the pic remained. Ceej was insistent on only using official artwork for this opening round, not sprites, and when it came to that restriction Kefkas picture was the best you were gonna get. The pic remained, and the match went on.

And while the picture might have dampened enthusiasm, Kefka got off to a decent start. Many things have changed with Kefka over the years, but one thing that has remained consistent is his strength on the board. He was able to use this to get out to an early lead and build up a 1,000 vote lead in the first several hours of the poll. As things dragged on however, and once the Day Vote kicked in for good, Pac-Man made his move and started a comeback. This would not be a particularly dramatic one, like Ganondorfs attempted one against Magus, but a more incremental affair, as over the course of the day, Pac-Man slowly chipped a couple of hundred votes off the lead. At any point, Pac-Man could have shifted into another gear and really made a run at things, but he never did. While we might have given up on Pac-Man if this match had happened in later years, this was one of the only nailbiters wed ever seen at this point, and it wasnt until late afternoon/evening, when Kefka started gaining again, that we really felt confident in him putting the match away.

Kefka would scrape by and win the match in the end, but his reputation had been tarnished in the process. Being the equal of Pac-Man did not make someone an Elite or Near Elite; in fact, it barely placed you above the fodder line. The picture was given a lot of deserved blame for this result, but what was also clear was that Kefka had become one of the first major busts in contest history. Despite that ignominious honor, Kefka would go on to see his share of ups and downs over the years, this match also marking the beginning of the meme that Kefkas matches make no sense! And while that would not always be due to, it was frequently the result of the picture that debuted in this match, a very lovely leaf of lettuce.

You got to wonder how funny the xstats hijinks could have been if Kefka got lucky enough to get a path to round 3 in this contest.

In fact, there was a Snubs Tournament on the Board after 2002, and that was the final result.

I still find it incredible that people thought Magus and Kefka were bigger snubs than Bowser or Luigi.

It's no accident that Kefka became a decent midcarder once Dissidia gave him recognizable pictures to use

Maybe the most important thing that game did

Underleveled posted...

In fact, there was a Snubs Tournament on the Board after 2002, and that was the final result.

I still find it incredible that people thought Magus and Kefka were bigger snubs than Bowser or Luigi.

Bowser was one of the Semifinalists, I think. I also don't recall if the contest was about potential contest strength or personal preference, although the line between the two of those was pretty slim at that time. I wish I could remember more details, but a lot of stuff about 2002 is a black box.

Luigi was the Mario character in 2003 people had high expectations for, not as much for Bowser or Yoshi.

In fact, I think Bowser was expected to be the clear #3 and many thought he would lose to Yoshi because of that Favorite Mario Character POTD that Yoshi won back in the day.

What I would give for another character battle with no joke characters.

Leonhart4 posted...

In fact, I think Bowser was expected to be the clear #3 and many thought he would lose to Yoshi because of that Favorite Mario Character POTD that Yoshi won back in the day.

I understand how it's different from a contest match, but that poll has been run 5 times over 23 years and Yoshi has won every time! With Mario and Luigi swapping 2nd place between them, and Bowser always taking 4th except 2020 when Waluigi was popular. That's impressive consistency despite Yosh IIRC never getting a super deep contest run.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll?search=mario+character

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/828cd7ba.jpg

I never bothered to look this up in HD until now

ZenOfThunder posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/828cd7ba.jpg

I never bothered to look this up in HD until now

There's even a Dissidia version of Lettuce Kefka!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/63fd8cb3.jpg

48. Ansem vs. CATS (Sp2005) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0800192a.jpg

Ansem 54.04% 36637
CATS 45.96% 31153
TOTAL VOTES 67790
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(4)Ansem_vs_(5)CATS_2005
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2002-triforce-division-round-1-ansem-vs-cats

I just wrote about Gordon Freeman and his status as a contest icon/mascot, and if theres any other character that could compete/beat him on that score, it would be CATS. While the lovable loser aspect of their appeal might be similar, there are obvious differences too. While Gordon Freemans meme status might be unknown outside of Board 8, the meme that CATS comes from is known throughout the Internet (at the time of this match at least.) All Your Base is the ur-meme after all, at least among the nerdy, terminally online types that vote in video game character contests. The other difference between the two is that while we wanted Gordon Freeman to do as well as he possibly could without winning, we still in the end wanted him to lose to complete the cycle. When it came to CATS, however, his supporters, in theory, wanted him to win. Obviously he was never going to beat Ryu or Cloud or Link, so this was not a reality that had to be contemplated in any serious way, but that was the difference between him and Gordon. CATS losing every match was secondary to his appeal, it was not the whole point. So if a match ever came along where he had an opportunity to win, we would all jump at the opportunity to support him. But as one of our weakest regular competitors, there was no chance of that ever happening

Enter the Villains Contest. For the first time, CATS was being put into a contest where he would not get destroyed by the vast majority of entrants. And there were even a handful that CATS might have a shot at beating outright. When the bracket was released and CATS was given a first round match with Ansem, it generated a slight double take for most people, a moment of Could he actually do it? hesitation, but then we all shook ourselves out of it and picked Ansem. Sure, nobody really cared about Ansem, but he was from a popular series, so that should be enough to take down CATS, sadly enough. And then, the picture for the match was released. I dont recall there being too much speculation about what effect the picture would have, which in hindsight seems crazy. CATS had previously received the same full body picture in his three previous losses, a blurry sprite which was the only possible option to fit the pic theme of those rounds. Unless they were really deep into the lore of the meme, it was very unlikely that a casual would realize that it was the All Your Base Guy. In Spring 05 though, the pic theme of R1 was close-ups, which for CATS was a game changer. He now had a detailed, recognizable picture that made the connection between him and the meme abundantly clearAnd we all just shrugged and stuck with Ansem up to the start of the match.

As expected, CATS got off to an early lead in the match, and while it would not have been unexpected for him to keep said lead a little longer than usual, what soon became clear was that CATSs time ahead of Ansem was going to last more than a little longer than usual. 15 minutes in, CATS had a 100 vote lead and was still gaining. 30 minutes in, CATS had a 150 vote lead and was still gaining. Ansem would start stalling things up shortly thereafter, but one hour in, CATS had a lead of just under 180 votes, and was still gaining a bit here and there despite the stalls from Ansem. Unfortunately, this was all occurring in the dead of night, but those few users who were still around were flabbergasted. CATS was a joke. How in the world was he pulling this off? Could joke characters actuallywin? Once the Power Hour wore off, Ansem quickly started to make a comeback, but as soon as he got the lead, things started stalling out again, and the two of them went back and forth, trading the lead between themselves for hours on end. As people in earlier time zones started waking up and checking the results, they were shocked at what they found. Five hours in, and CATS was still holding on to a 9 vote lead, somehow, against all reason and logic, still in the match.

And unfortunately for the CATS Army, that is where CATSs run would end. 8:15 AM EST would mark the last time he was in the lead, and the Day Vote that brought in the shocked users would also usher in the widely vaunted Kingdom Hearts Day Vote, which Ansem would run away with, cementing his win for good. The proper order of things had finally reasserted itself and Ansem would make it into the Second Round (which he had a decent performance in) despite the complete embarrassment that was the first quarter of the poll. Still, for five hours we had been in some sort of alternate reality, and while the upset would never come, this match would still go down in history as one of the most hilarious of all time.

Yeah Melee/Brawl is an all-timer for reasons that went way beyond a GameFAQs poll. It was about a deadlocked line drawn in the sand between warring factions of a single fanbase and the poll came down to which side the scale would tip in favor of that day. And it tipped in the favor of the side that was widely seen as the underdog back then and you could argue has been validated by history.

That being said, I think if that poll were held again today, Melee would demolish Brawl. Brawl didn't even get into BGE3 and is so old now that its fans care more about more recent Smash games. Plus Melee can be easily rallied.

I remember some of us argued that CATS had a vote ceiling due to his meme status, and that he could only manage so many votes regardless of opponent. This match obviously proved that wrong!

Also Melee/Brawl was such a big deal that it necessitated the first and only live episode of The Show.

Underleveled posted...

That being said, I think if that poll were held again today, Melee would demolish Brawl. Brawl didn't even get into BGE3 and is so old now that its fans care more about more recent Smash games. Plus Melee can be easily rallied.

Yeah, I'm of the opinion that Melee didn't lose to Brawl , it lost to "the most recent Smash game". I think Melee would've lost to SSB4 in 2015 as well, and certainly loses to Ultimate if there were to be a contest match right now.

47. Master Chief vs. Sub-Zero (Fall 2006) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0aae2d06.jpg

Master Chief 49.05% 62932
Sub-Zero 50.95% 65358
TOTAL VOTES 128290
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(2)Master_Chief_vs_(7)Sub-Zero_2006
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2530-time-division-round-1-master-chief-vs-sub-zero

Theres been no more reliable source of newcomers over the years than the Nomination Rally Tournament. Started by Leonhart in 2005 as a way to create consensus on which newcomers had enough potential to be rallied into the next Character Contest, its winners and finalists over the years have gone on to make their mark in contest history: Tifa, Charizard, Pokemon R/B/Y are just some of the entrants who were able to build up support via the NRT and then turn that support into bracket placement and contest success. Even though the entrants mentioned above might have been the strongest to come out of the NRT, this match is the one that comes to mind when I think of what its greatest successes were, and how the entertainment it brought to the contests.

And I think part of that association is because this was supposed to be the year that the NRT was a waste. The rallied newcomers of 2005, both from the NRT and otherwise, while not always successful, had managed to produce a string of interesting matches and discussion. The hope was that the 2006 NRT winners (Prince of Persia, Captain Falcon, Nightmare, and Sub-Zero) would be able to do the same. When the format for 2006 was announced though, it became clear that a repeat of 2005 would be quite difficult. With a bracket divided in half by Gender, and only 32 spots available for the much stronger Male half, it was clear that this limited space (both in terms of nominations and bracket space) would be dominated by the standard set of characters wed already seen four times before. If the NRT winners got in at all, they would be low seeds fed up to an Elite character right away, with no opportunity to create an interesting match. And when the bracket was released, that assumption was proved true. Nightmare didnt make it in at all, and PoP, Captain Falcon, and Sub-Zero all received low seeds, placed in first round matches that they had little shot at winning.

And as the First Round went on, that assumption held true. Prince of Persia and Captain Falcon looked good, but they were ultimately up against characters that were just too strong for them. The only NRT winner left at this point was Sub-Zero, whose chances were better than the other two, but who was still stuck in a bad spot behind Master Chief. Now this wasnt the Master Chief wed seen in 2003, or the one thats shown up in the past several contests. Post Halo 2, with Halo 3 hype steadily rising, Chief was ascendant, and he had turned in a very strong performance against Crono the previous year. Sub-Zero had his backers, but Master Chief was a bridge too far for most everyone else, and the Halo star had the vast majority of brackets on his side. There was one small complication however, which no one seemed to notice during the prediction period: a new Mortal Kombat game would be released several days before the match. But no one really cares about new MK games anymore, do they? Theres no way that would effect the final results.

Friday the 13th dawned, and for Master Chief, it would turn out to be his unluckiest match day yet. Despite actually winning the initial Board Vote, Chief was already behind by 32 votes at the freeze, and as the match went on, Sub-Zeros numbers kept going up and up, approaching 54% of the vote overnight. In other words, Master Chief was in a lot of trouble. There was still a shot when the Morning Vote kicked in though. Sub-Zeros lead was approaching 3,000, which would have necessitated the largest successful comeback we had ever seen. A huge reach, but still barely within the realm of possibility for Chief. The Morning Vote kicked in, and true to form Chief started gaining in percentagebut he failed to cut into the lead. The match, for all intents and purposes, was over.

Chief, to his credit, would put on a very strong show with the ASV later in the day, pulling off a ~2,000 vote comeback over the back third of the match, but it was just too little, too late at that point. The first round of 2006 had come to an end with an absolute shock. Master Chief, who we all thought had redeemed himself in 05, and put his embarrassing performances/losses behind himself, had one last shock for us after all. And the 2006 NRT, which we had thought was a waste, had proved itself, right at the last minute. When I talk about impressive debut performances, it usually involves some kind of shocking blowout, but when it comes to Sub-Zero it was the exact opposite. He had managed to pull off an iconic upset on his very first try, setting a R1 prediction record that has yet to be beaten in a 1v1, and becoming a contest mainstay that would make every subsequent year. Hard to be a more successful rally entry than that.

I'd probably top 20 cats/ansem

I was awake during that night vote and it was quite entertaining

I'm still kind of surprised at how few people even on B8 gave Sub-Zero a shot at beating Master Chief. I never had any doubt Subby would win that one.

He got the same "well if he's so popular why was Scorpion in every year and he wasn't" talk Tifa and Vincent got coming into 2005. Scorpion kept getting in because he was placed in the bracket in 2002, but any MK fan could've told you Sub-Zero was the most popular.

Also thanks for the NRT shoutout. It basically got dominated by Pokemon in the later years, but I'm still super proud of what that did for several contest entrants over the years.

2006 was definitely weird. We had a string of solid staples/midcarders that missed the field (Magus, Frog, Donkey Kong, Kefka, Vivi, Knuckles, Ness, and Tommy Vercetti who was about on par with that group at the time), and yet, even aside from the NRT winners, we had some interesting characters manage to sneak into the male half of the bracket, like Soma Cruz, Axel, and even Tingle.

And Master Chief became the ultimate loser that year

46. Donkey Kong vs. Tommy Vercetti (2003) R2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2474baa3.jpg

Donkey Kong 49.52% 50457
Tommy Vercetti 50.48% 51425
TOTAL VOTES 101882
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(6)Donkey_Kong_vs_(3)Tommy_Vercetti_2003
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1351-west-division-round-2-donkey-kong-vs-tommy-vercetti

What a difference 20 years makes. Much like Maguss performance against Ganondorf earlier, this is a performance from Vercetti that, in hindsight, feels like a major accomplishment, but which at the time was considered a huge disappointment. If Magus and Kefka were the most hyped 03 newcomers for the contest obsessives, when it came to the casuals, there was no one more hyped than Tommy Vercetti. Ceej released a list at one point of how many winner predictions each entrant had, and Vercetti ranked 6th overall, ahead of Samus, Sonic, Mega Man and Crono, and on par with characters like Snake and Cloud. Master Chief would take over Vercettis place as the casual king in latter contests, but in 2003, with Vice City less than a year old, and GTA at its peak on the site, Vercetti was it. He had a ton of brackets behind him, and probably had even odds with Mega Man to make the Elite Eight.

That was the casuals though; the contest veterans had other ideas. In one of the first big divergences we would see between the two groups, the general consensus for the veterans on the board was that Vercetti would make the Sweet Sixteen and then absolutely bow out to Mega Man after that. No shot at winning, or even making the Divisional Finals here. There was a pretty wide range in opinions on Vercettis popularity even amongst that group though, and while we knew that GTAs popularity on GameFAQS would be a step down from its popularity in the gaming public at large, we didnt know quite how large a step it would be. Would he get blown out by Mega Man? Break 40%? We werent quite sure what to expect against the Blue Bomber, and there was a smaller contingent that questioned whether or not he would even get to Mega Man in the first place. Now despite making the Sweet Sixteen in 2002, DK hadnt had the most impressive looking contest that year, so him beating Vercetti was mostly a minority opinion. A minority opinion that got a big boost after Vercettis Round 1 match against Kite. Even on a site as obsessed with JRPGS as GameFAQS was in 2003, there was no real fanbase for .hack. Expectations for Kite were extremely low, so to see him hit 35% against Vercetti was a wake up call, and a sign that he was nowhere near the sky high popularity that some had thought he had. DK had done comparable numbers against Vyse the previous day, and the comparisons between the two were obvious. Two characters doing similar numbers against similar opponents? Round 2 was now officially anyones game.

The match started and it immediately lived up to the newly built hype. The two characters came out of the gate 50/50, with Vercetti initially holding the barest of leads. The Night Vote kicked in, and Vercetti inched a bit further into the lead, but there was nothing akin to the kind of drastic movements we sometimes see when the Board Vote wears off. Vercetti got just under 51.5% and hung on there all night, bit by bit building up a lead of near 600 votes. His lead was stable, but we had seen DK pull off a comeback of this magnitude before, so the match became a waiting game to see what would happen once the Day Vote kicked in. Like clockwork, at 7:00 AM EST, the kiddies started waking up, and for the second contest in a row, DK would use the Day Vote to stage a comeback, once again in a battle for the Sweet Sixteen. For the next eight hours, DK would lay on the gas, cutting off votes update after update, in an effort to take hold of the lead. Around noon, he started slowing down a little, and Vercetti would occasionally win an update or two, but Donkey Kong was persistent, still in control of the match as it built to an inevitable climax. And then, on the 3:15 PM update, DK did it, surging into the lead with a 111 vote turnaround, the largest vote shift wed see for the entire match.

Immediately upon pulling this off though, the energy seemed to drain from DK, and the match settled into its next phase. For the next two and a half hours, the two characters would go at it evenly, stalling each other out and trading the lead back and forth. This was the era of 15 minute updates, which produced both unbearable waits at times, as well as huge vote shifts from update to update. DK up by 102, Tommy up by 93, DK up by 76, and so on and so on. As great as this was, it was also clear that if DK couldnt build up anything now, hed be doomed when the Second Night Vote came in. And thats exactly what happened. After an afternoon long back and forth, Vercetti would finally get a break with the SNV, which he would win handily, allowing him to rebuild a lead, and narrowly win the match. Vercetti would go on to have an acceptable loss to Mega Man in the following round, but the damage had been done. Vercettis time as a contender was over for good. With how far Vercetti has fallen it can be hard to remember that he was once respectable in these things, and even harder to remember just how disappointing for him being respectable was.

Yesmar_ posted...

With how far Vercetti has fallen it can be hard to remember that he was once respectable in these things, and even harder to remember just how disappointing for him being respectable was.

Yeah, going from having ~1% matches with DK and Kefka to getting tripled by Crash is one of the most drastic falls we've ever seen in a single character's contest history.

It's funny to think that Vercetti has two 50/50 wins over contest mainstays who would probably double him now (or come close).

Vercetti was seen as a dark horse pic to win the contest, mostly because we hadn't seen GTA in the previous contest. Link was so dominant that if you wanted to go pick against the popular consensus, GTA at least made sense with the amount of copies sold and discussion generated about it.

Though imagine if we had seen the GTA3 protagonist in the Summer 2002 contest, because he would have been labeled as either "Fido" or "the GTA 3 guy." His name wouldn't be revealed until San Andreas came out.

45. Solid Snake vs. Bowser (2005) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7a46667f.jpg

Solid Snake 50.59% 51387
Bowser 49.41% 50191
TOTAL VOTES 101578
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Solid_Snake_vs_(3)Bowser_2005
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2123-tournament-quarterfinal-solid-snake-vs-bowser

For a relatively unheralded contest, the Villains Contest cast a long shadow over the Character Battle following it. Any villains that were making a second appearance in the regular Battle had absurdly high prediction percentages, even against characters that bracketmakers would have ordinarily taken without a second doubt. And while this newfound faith in characters like Bowser and Ganondorf might have been overly generous, it wasnt entirely misplaced. There did indeed appear to be a bit of a Villains Boost when it came to the characters who had just been in the Spring Contest, and while in Ganon and Bowsers case this might be hard to disentangle from the overall Nintendo Boost that year, what was clear was that the two of them were stronger than theyd ever been.

Bowser would take advantage of the Clinkeroth less bracket to become the first non-Noble Niner since Scorpion to make the Elite Eight, starting off his run by doubling Chun-Li in Round 1, then going on to completely dominate Ryu in a Round 2 match that pre-contest was very hotly debated. He came down to Earth a bit after a closer than expected match against Kirby in Round 3, but it was clear that this was not the Bowser we had seen in the previous two contests. Bowser > Snake, which had been considered a sexy upset pick during the bracketmaking phase, while still not expected, was given a bit more credence than it had been at the dawn of the contest. Snake had managed to beat his previous opponents without much trouble, and Bowser was generally considered to be one more match of the same, but there remained a nagging doubt in the back of many peoples minds, a doubt that became more pronounced once the match pic for the Sprite Round was released. Just like the match against Frog, Snake once again received a pixelated mess, albeit this time one that somewhat resembled a human. Snake remained the favorite to win the match, but his supporters would be praying that the slightly better pic, and an overall improved performance from Snake in the previous rounds would be enough to make up any advantages over Frog that Bowser might have.

The match started, and in the early going at least, Snake was holding up better than he had against Frog, pushing 56% at one point. The Morning Vote hit, and just like in 2004, it was not kind to Snake, and Bowser started stalling him out immediately. An hour into the Morning Vote and Snake was down from mid 55% to mid 54%, eventually dropping all the way down to ~52.5% before he was able to stop the stalls and start consistently gaining again. By the time the ASV rolled around Snake had built up a 2,000 vote lead, and could easily withstand the kind of embarrassing stallfest he had been put through by Frog in 04. When it came to this ASV however, Bowser was not someone like Frog who had benefited mostly from Snakes weakness during the time frame. Bowser was actually good at the ASV himself, and once it took off in earnest, so did he, cutting into Snakes lead not just here and there, but consistently, on almost every single update. This was not mere stalling; Bowser was in the midst of a full blown comeback

It wasnt the most dramatic comeback wed ever seen, and if Bowser wanted to have a shot at winning hed need to pick up the pace and/or keep things going all the way til 3AM. The latter was pretty unlikely for someone with Bowsers trends, so the Bowser faithful waited with baited breath to see if a deluge of ASV votes would start arriving in his favor and give him enough momentum to turn things completely around. Fortunately for Snake however, Bowser would stay in the same gear all throughout the afternoon and early evening, good enough to shave 1,400 votes off the lead, but not enough to ever put him within striking distance of a victory, especially once the Second Night Vote kicked in and Snake started to rebuild his lead, which he held all the way to the end. With this narrow result, Snake would, for the first time in his contest career, make the Final Four, but would do so in a match that would see him come, for the second year in a row, closer than anyone in the Noble Nine had ever come to being defeated. The group would hold strong, for one more year at least, but with results like this it had become increasingly clear just how fragile the Noble Nine really was.

I know the match was close, but I never really felt like Snake was in danger of losing to Bowser in the end.

I was among those who backed Bowser > Snake, especially on the off-chance the Sprite Round might happen during this round. Which was actually a very ill-advised thing to do since this was Round 4, and the sprites were always done on Round 3 in previous contests, but it turned out that I ended up being right on that call

But alas, there's a reason the Noble Nine endured for so long, because even with the stacked deck, those characters just got the job done even with a handicap.

I wasn't there at the time, but in hindsight I can imagine Bowser catching momentum from the Villains Contest and Snake underperforming in sprite rounds because people didn't recognize him. Snake seemed to be fine when given a sprite match in 2018, but tbf his opponent was Auron.