LogFAQs > #914502787

14.



This dumb round 1 match is probably the single most surprising result in my 15 years of pollwatching. Draven might have annihilated MMX and Ryu but that was at least within my realm of possibility. Doing this to a mainline Zelda game was... not. This match also had huge ripple effects for the next two contests.

Pokemon was getting more legit every year. Pikachu had already knocked off L-Block the year prior and had gone from being awful to being a midcard type of character. He wasn't beating Noble Niners or anything, but he could hold his own. He beat Dante and Leon in a 2007 match that also broke my brain, though not as much as this one. Pokemon surprisingly almost beat Metroid in the series contest. By 2009, Pokemon was pretty well accepted as being decent to good. Not THIS good, though.

Majora's Mask was the favourite in this match. Why? Zelda, hierarchy and everything that comes with the name. I actually picked the winner correctly (thanks to 3 N64 games in the poll) and was still flabbergasted at what happened. RBY didn't just win, it dominated Majora. The first minute, I thought it was just a funny board vote. Nope!

Take away the other games and this is a 64/36 result. The number of games that can get 64% on a big Zelda game on this website is... Ocarina, LTTP and maybe FF7. Actually, LTTP faced Majora a few years later and couldn't even break 60. So maybe just Ocarina and maybe FF7.

RBY wasn't done though. In case people thought that the 3 N64 game thing mattered, it took on MGS and Majora with GSC in the poll. RBY still finished second, well ahead of Zelda. It then faced MGS and FF8 with Ocarina of goddamn Time in the poll and still finished second. It wasn't until it got sandwiched between Ocarina AND Melee, against FFX, that it lost. And it didn't lose by much. Take Melee out of the poll and RBY makes the finals (and FF7 wins the contest easy). It was the clear star of the contest.

The whole contest, we were debating what the #3 game was. Mario 64? LTTP? Chrono Trigger? We were all way off. It was, unquestionably, RBY. It might have even been the #2 game. RBY killed the 2009 game contest the way that Zelda killed the 2018 contest.

But that's not all this match did. It also exposed Majora as a fake. How could you pick Majora in GOTD when it got stomped by RBY the way it did? Majora nearly lost to GSC with RBY in the poll. You'd have to intentionally ignore the previous contest to believe in it, and a few people did because Zelda, but most people went with GSC.

And a few weeks later, Majora was a plucky underdog that won game of the decade. If you want to know why people question Majora's legitimacy, look no further than this match. RBY destroyed two contests at once. Too bad 2009 wasn't a 1v1. RBY could have destroyed some people. This match might even be too low on this list.
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xyzzy