LogFAQs > #983317716

21. Crono vs. Missingno (Winter 2010) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/1adaaee2.jpg

Crono 49.71% 45277
Missingno 50.29% 45804
TOTAL VOTES 91081
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(4)Crono_vs_(13)Missingno_2010
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3789-jenova-division-round-1-crono-vs-missingno

Should a loss in a 12 hour match count as breaking the Noble Nine? Just as we were quick to answer a similar question when 4 way contests were announced (No, it doesnt), we were equally quick to answer it when 12 hour matches first came on the scene (Yes, it does). Whether we were quick because our previous confidence in 4 way screwiness hadnt been misplaced, or because we were desperate to have the Noble Nine break officially, we might have been a little too hasty in our analysis, done as it was before a single 12 hour match had even taken place. Sure, 12 hour matches arent as abnormal as a 4 way match is, but over several contests, I think we learned that they dont really give a complete result either. Both AM and PM matches retained far from 100% of the votes that a 24 hour match did (people speculated that PM matches had ~70% of the votes from a 24 hour match, and that AM matches had just under 60% or so, I think), and those votes werent distributed proportionally to what a 24 hour vote would have been either. AM matches particularly would favor characters with strong Night Votes, and PM matches, while not as extreme as AM ones, would disfavor said characters. But at the start of 2010, we didnt know any of this, and a decision was made, a decision which would come into play much sooner than anyone had anticipated.

Missingno was much like L-Block, not just because they were both joke characters that threatened to derail an entire contest, but because they both kind of came out of nowhere to do so. L-Block wasnt some oft talked about joke entrant that wed been dying to get into a contest for years, and neither was Missingno. Even in the heady days after Pokemon R/B/Ys strong showing in the 2009 Contest, when every Pokemon under the sun was discussed as a new entrant, I dont recall Missingno ever coming up. I cant remember anyone expressing any interest in seeing it in a contest until it showed up on Day 1 of the Vote-Ins for 2010. Missingno would win its Vote-In with ease, even despite the inclusion of two other Pokemon in the poll. This should have been a sign, but as Vote-Ins were a brand new concept for us, its performance here went mostly unremarked upon. And once the bracket was released, Missingnos potential, to the extent that we thought the glitch had any, was noticeably wasted, being forced to go up against Crono in Round 1. Crono himself would have an unremarkable path laid out in 2010, set to win two matches before going out to Sephiroth in the Third Round. Yoshi might put a scare into him in Round 2, but for a character long thought to be the one to break the Noble Nine, his path was considered a wasted opportunity.

While many groundbreaking matches in contest history tend to have a bit of foreshadowing leading up them, aside from the Vote-In mentioned above, there really wasnt anything to cling onto here or anything that implied anything more than the 60/40 Crono victory we were all expecting. Pokemon was having a strong contest and Chrono Trigger a somewhat weaker one, but nothing out of the ordinary or extreme enough to set off any warning bells. Yoshi beat Jak very solidly in the AM match that day, and then, at 12:00 PM, on February 14th, Valentines Day, the breakup of the Noble Nine got underway. While Missingno would do very well in the first seconds of the poll, Crono would be the one in the lead at the freeze. Shockingly, he was leading by a single vote, and while it was clear that Missingno would be stronger than we all thought, there was no reason yet to see this as anything more than the typical Joke Fueled Early Vote. That single vote lead, it turned out however, would be the only one Crono would get for the rest of the match.

When the first update hit, 10 minutes in, it became clear that the Early Vote had not been favoring Missingno, it had been favoring Crono. Missingno wasnt just leading, it was leading by 95 votes! And while its percentage would stabilize at just over 51%, its lead would keep going up and up over the first several hours of the poll. 100 votes, 200, votes, two hours in and Missingnos lead had crested 600 votes. It didnt take long to discover that our increasingly common nemesis 4chan was responsible for hundreds of those votes, if not the lead entirely, but for Crono/Missingno to be close enough for such a rally to even matter was truly shocking. As a 12 hour match, rallies had a greater impact obviously, but this would be the most popular 12 hour match of all time, pulling in 91,000 votes when all was said and done. That should have been enough to stop something like this from happening. Was this how the Noble Nine would end? Not with one of the expected breakers like Vincent or Ganondorf, but with the help of 4chan, and with a literal glitch?

Not if Crono had anything to say about it. Finally, two and a half hours in, Crono would start fighting back, picking at the lead here and there, but as is often the case whenever someone tries to fight back against an ongoing rally, any gains that Crono made, any momentum he could build up, was countered by a newfound intensity from the forces offsite. By 7 PM, with only five hours left in the match, Crono was right back where he had started, the lead still far over 500 votes. This time though, Crono was able to start a comeback with some juice, something that might actually go somewhere. Over the next two hours, Crono would take 400 votes off the lead. All he would need was one more hour or so at the same pace, and he would be able to take back the lead. One hour was all he needed, and Crono had three hours left to work with. Unfortunately, that run from 7-9 PM would prove to be Cronos last, as he stalled out for the next hour or two, and then saw any remaining momentum overrun by renewed rallies from offsite. Cronos initial lead would remain his only one, and Missingno would win the day, or well, the afternoon, to be more precise, stunning us all.

The unsatisfying nature of the result led many to grumble about whether or not the Noble Nine really did break with this match, and while, as I mentioned earlier on, there was a point to be made about the vagaries of 12 hour matches, it was hard not to see the complaining as a bit of sour grapes. Not only had the Noble Nine lost, it had lost to an outsider, not someone that anyone could get the bragging rights about predicting. It was both a climax and an anticlimax at the same time, not the way that things were supposed to be. However, more than anything, it was history, history that had been made in the most bizarre way possible. After 8 years, and seven and a half Character Battles, the Noble Nine had finally fallen.