LogFAQs > #914435990

21.



The summer 2004 contest was probably the worst contest we could have gotten at that time. I'm not sure you could make a worse bracket if you tried. Every good character was put into an SFF battle and it ended up being super predictable. I think the contest winner had a -1 bracket, and that was Ryu/KOS-MOS of all things.

The exception to this, of course, was Link/Cloud. Cloud had won 2003 and FF7 had won spring 2004 just a couple of months before this one started. In 2003 you had a string of results that showed that Cloud was more than up to the challenge of facing Link. You had Squall/Luigi, you had Seph/Mario, you had Mario/Sonic, etc etc. For this one? It wasn't until the last 3 days that you really had any idea. Link/Mega Man (RIP Heroic Mario) and Cloud/Samus both could have made the list for how they framed the contest, but it was only a day or two before the penultimate battle. Otherwise you spent 2004 trying to compare Link's result vs. CATS to Cloud's vs. Duke Nukem. Cloud faced Squall and Sephiroth while Link got Yoshi and Ganondorf. Who thought this was a good idea? The only other good result was Link beating Crono 63/37 after Crono beat Mario. That was still within the range of 2003 Cloud though, since Seph put 61% on Mario. The problem was, 2004 Cloud wasn't 2003 Cloud, even though he managed to beat Sephiroth by a higher percentage than 03.

But once Link beat Mega Man, it was really on. That was his Cloud/Sonic moment. The general consensus at the time - and maybe now still, I'm not sure - was some combination of the Master Quest collection (came out the year prior), the Twilight Princess trailer and another year away from Kingdom Hearts gave Link what he needed. The picture being adult Link probably also helped. It really could have been Cloud dropping back just as easily as Link pushing ahead. Link/Mega Man isn't exactly a fair fight, after all, as we saw with things like Mega Man/Yoshi.

I don't put this one up super high because of the contest it came from. In reality, it probably belongs in the top 10 but it never felt that way. Link always felt like the favorite to me. He was heavily favored in the Oracle in this match too, despite Cloud/FF7 winning the last two contests. Cloud really needed everything to break his way to get one over on Link and he didn't have that in 04.
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xyzzy