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Games 2009
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_2009_Contest

MVP: Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow
Confidence: 75%

This is the greatest newcomer entry of all time, jokes or rallies notwithstanding. Pokemon was starting to get somewhere on this site, and Pikachu was a midcarder that had ended L-Block's reign, but it wasn't crazy like this. Most people picked RBY to come in second to Majora's Mask in round 1 and then lose in round 2. It was absolutely a reasonable take, but RBY crushed expectations, winning the Majora's poll outright with 50% and then placing an easy second despite GSC being in the poll alongside Metal Gear Solid and Majora.

In fact, RBY had the worst bracket situations that you could imagine and just kept on surviving. It got paired with Ocarina starting in round 3 and still managed to beat out MGS and FF8, and then had a nightmare SFF/LFF match with Ocarina/Melee/FFX that it still almost qualified in, losing just barely to FFX.

RBY had a legitimate claim to being a top 3 game on the site, which is not what anybody expected. Easy pick here.

Honorable Mention: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Super Mario World, Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy X, Tetris

There are a lot of good runs in 2009, many of them due to circumstances. Division by era + fourways really killed the hype that this contest would have had. It's one of the great tragedies in contest history, that we didn't get a proper 1v1, no gimmick game contest until 2015.

First of all, it's impossible to avoid talking about Ocarina. It wasn't an amazing run, and the final was tainted by the presence of LTTP and FFX in the poll as well (woo fourways), but this was a watershed moment. Link had beaten Cloud, and Zelda had beaten Final Fantasy in the series contest, but FF7 was still our top dog at the time. This was the last frontier where FF7 could claim an edge, and with this result, we had officially transitioned into FF7's post prime. It was no longer our #1 game. And in case there was any doubt, FF7 and Ocarina had a bonus poll the next day where Ocarina had a Link-like win over FF7. End of an era.

But in terms of an actual run, I don't think any game had a bigger claim than Mario 64, a game that beat the beloved Chrono Trigger despite having Yoshi's Island in the poll with it. Crono had a nice finals run in 2008, and CT was a former finalist while SM64 had gotten demolished by Ocarina in 04. But here it was, taking care of CT pretty handily and eliminating it when FF7 joined the poll. Mario 64 almost beat LTTP but came up just short. It would have been fascinating if it had won because it would have meant FF7/Mario 64/Mario 3/Mario World, which probably goes to 64 due to the 2d/3d split but still.

Speaking of Mario World, we rarely see a shift in hierarchy. FF6 doesn't suddenly beat FF7, for example. But Mario World rose up and took out Mario 3. At first maybe you could explain it away because fellow NES game Zelda 1 was in the poll, but the next round was with LTTP and Mario World still finished ahead of 3. This was a change to stay. Mario World's run was also good because there was a goofy Zelda 1/Mario 1/Mario 3/Mario World poll and both World and 3 still managed to eliminate Zelda.

Metal Gear Solid 4 and Brawl had such a weird relationship for these two years, with an intense GOTY poll battle back in 2008 and then this 2009 rematch. Brawl beats MGS4 easy in round 3 only for MGS4 to come back and hang on to first place for dear life when Twilight Princess entered the poll. Little did we know that this was the end of MGS4 as a legitimate contest game.

FFX is worth a quick mention as it made the final. The other three spots felt pretty secure with FF7, LTTP and Ocarina, but FFX was the wildcard. Thanks to division by era, it was the one Square game that was able to ride without a lot of overlap, with the only exception being Kingdom Hearts which it got rid of by scoring second place to Melee. It rode the RBY/Melee/Ocarina match to second place and then edged out MGS4 in a match with Ocarina and Melee.

And finally, I have a soft spot with Tetris showing Mega Man 2 what was up. Tetris was embarrassed in the 2004 contest by Zelda and the thought was that it would get destroyed by any good game. Mega Man 2 was a good game, but not better than Tetris. Tetris ended up running into Mario and Zelda and getting destroyed, but there's something about early round matchups that stick with you in a contest, like Hollow Knight over Tales this contest. Tetris was that contest's version of that.

2009 should have been so much better, but you have to look at every result with a huge grain of salt because of all the overlap. I wish we could have seen another contest with RBY, because honestly we never did thanks to Undertale.

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xyzzy