Board 8 > transience presents: the 75 most important matches in contest history

(+) Yeah! (+)

50.



Super Metroid's contest history up to this point was embarrassing. In 2004 it got killed by LTTP, which was kind of understandable. But 2009 had it ever so barely beating Super Mario Kart, twice. I get LTTP. It's a top 5 game of all time. But Super Mario Kart is... not. Combine that with Mario/Samus and just, is Samus just a mirage or what? Her theoretical best game is anything but.

But then the 2015 contest comes along and, whoa. Super Metroid is just killing fools. Call of Duty, sure, whatever, it's Call of Duty. But then it blasted Super Mario Galaxy. That was a new-ish game though, one that came out after the glory days. Galaxy 2 had that dreadful match against Mass Effect 1. Maybe, like COD, it just sucked.

But then Majora comes and it's one of the most delightful matches in my memory. Here was my baby standing up to the game of the decade. Against Zelda! Super Metroid wasn't a wimp anymore. It was all grown up, and with it, so was Samus.

I refuse to believe in Samus ever beating Mario out of habit, and also because I have a defense mechanism that kicks in from the beating I took in 2005, but this match totally telegraphed it: Samus wasn't a leech anymore. She was legit and her game is legit too. All the games done quick/internet buzz/metroidvania stuff had paid off. This game was a true classic in the eyes on gamefaqs, finally.
---

And now I can finally start voting for it since I actually beat it this year.
---

"Finally" sums it up. Normally, my reaction to an entrant showing unexpected strength is surprise. But in this case it was "Finally, Super Metroid is showing the power it should have always had".
---

49.



Sonic fans just adore this match. I get it. Sonic's contest history is kinda sad. A cheap shot by Samus, a doubling by Cloud, an uncomfortable hold against Ryu, an embarrassing rematch to Samus and a close loss to Mega Man. This is his one shining moment.

The writing was on the wall when Sonic blew up Luigi (Mario !!) while Crono struggled with Auron. Crono, if I remember right, started doing this thing where he looked good for four hours and then just struggled the rest of the match. You might as well rename Crono to Cialis because he needed urgent help after four hours. He just limped his way through every match. Sonic fans won't like hearing this, but this match is all about Crono, not Sonic.

Sonic went down big to Crono, as expected, but it wasn't enough to put him out of the match. Sonic turned a 2000 vote lead into a 2000 vote win in the matter of 12 hours. It was a great moment for him and a sad moment for Crono.

And... I'm not sure how much it matters in the long run. It certainly fueled the Vincent hype the following year, but Sonic went back to being kinda mediocre and hanging out at the bottom of the N9. But hey, he did better on Snake than Mega Man did, and that's something, right? I almost think that means more because I see Sonic and Mega Man as natural rivals, and the Crono stuff in 2006 was just kinda sad.
---

Still the greatest successful comeback of all time. Sonic's entire 2006 run was really fun, actually.
---

I'm still convinced Sonic could have gone toe-to-toe with Mario around that time
---

Ulti_PCA posted...

There will never be a bigger board explosion. It's just not possible.

Mario vs Crono II?
---

worst match of all time
---

48.



Let me try to set this one up here. Coming off of 2004, Snake is known to be the bottom of the N9, having gotten 58/42'd by Mega Man the year prior and barely beating Frog with a sprite pic. Mega Man had some hype thanks to my dear friend Heroic Mario but, yknow, he wasn't THAT good. In some weird alternate reality, that MM/Tidus match is on this list.

Anyway, Snake struggles with Manny friggin' Calavera (relatively, of course - remember, this is the guy who 95%'d Tanner the year prior), then runs into the Nintendo boost head on with a 54/46 result against Zelda. Meanwhile, Bowser drops a 59/41 on Ryu, Luigi's killing it and Mario, holy cow. Nintendo is at full strength this contest. The noble nine breaker hype builds.

Snake walks into a dream match with Sora that almost makes the list for just how preposterous it was. I don't think we've ever had a more one-sided picture than the Snake/Sora picture and he nearly doubles him. Meanwhile, Bowser struggles to put down Kirby, probably the #1 Boost character. Snake looks good again.

And then he gets the sprite pic. If Frog could get to 48%, what about Bowser? The NN was really on the line here. The match starts and Snake is winning, but not by a lot and there's a long match to go. Early voters know who Snake is but the day vote is coming and this is a Nintendo character he's against. Snake drops, and drops, and drops, and drops.. I want to say that Slowflake called it for Bowser at some point, and Bowser slows down just enough to hold. He never breaks 700 votes and the NN survives. Contest lore nerds exhale. The balance has been kept.

There's no doubt after this match that Snake is the weakest guy. Mario demolishes him the next round en route to a contest win and Snake gets put into the box that Crono held from 2006-2010: the weak link. Everyone picks against him in 2006, and rightfully so except oh wait he got a Smash trailer and is about to become a contest legend.
---

transience posted...

In some weird alternate reality, that MM/Tidus match is on this list.

it would certainly be on the list of most misleading results of all time

augh it still hurts
---

47.



Speaking of the Noble Nine and pictures: this is like that Snake/Bowser match on steroids. Unlike Snake/Bowser, there was no expectations here -- and then Samus gets a zero suit picture. She does well at the start, as you'd expect, but then just crumbles after an hour. Her lead hits 800 votes and then she just gives up. By 6am, Tifa has the lead. It might be the first time that a NN character has lost the lead outside of the first few minutes of a match.

There's just no way to know what the day vote will bring and if it means much for Samus. Theoretically the Boost that helped out Snake should help out Samus here -- but nope, she's powerless without her armor. I don't even think we grasped the full effect of what was going to happen here because we thought her attractive look would minimize the damage.

Samus recovered, but the damage was done - after Mario in 2005 (notice how I keep coming back to this?) and then this match, Samus had fraud stamped on her forehead. Zelda should be easy enough -- 2006 Zelda, anyway -- but Snake? This Snake? How was she going to bounce back after being embarrassed like this? We've seen pictures before, but this was something different. Samus was a fraud.
---

transience posted...

It might be the first time that a NN character has lost the lead outside of the first few minutes of a match.

Ryu actually had a lead on Sonic in 2004 up until 2:30 into the match, but the lead never got past 60.

That's the match everyone forgets about because of how much Sonic beasted with the Europe and day vote.
---

yeah, I mentioned it in the Sonic writeup. I guess that counts, yeah.
---

The thing I remember most about Samus/Tifa is, for some reason, the absolute meltdown Vlado had when Tifa lost the lead and never got it back

People REALLY cared about their pet characters back in the day
---

Contests were serious business back then.
---

that was nothing. (also, it's Vlado. he loses his mind over anything.) when I think of contest freakouts, I think of the jp.
---

remember andymancan literally rallying for Link in the Jay Solano B8 poll?
---

My fond memory of contest freakouts will be TAI'D UP AND HANGED, especially since it revolved around an all-time match picture fiasco.
---

_SecretSquirrel posted...

My fond memory of contest freakouts will be TAI'D UP AND HANGED, especially since it revolved around an all-time match picture fiasco.

yeah the Sin fin pic is definitely an all-time classic but not for the right reasons
---

transience posted...

I'm pretty sure twitter was the main source of the rally. we just tied it to tumblr because it's so sterotypically representative of undertale -- kinda like how we blamed the Tifa rally on hentai.

Round 1 was definitely Tumblr helping out Undertale and I think Round 2 was mostly Tumblr too. It's in Round 3 when "undertale_bot" started causing havoc on the contest by tweeting about the match and getting a spike of votes that lasted for many hours. Even the tweets from the Melee pro players were only effective for about 30 minutes at the most.
---

that was second only to fedor from that contest.
---

Tai is the ultimate freakout of all time. andymancan was less of a freakout and more of a stark betrayal - even back in the day, who rallies for Link on a B8-only poll?

I honestly don't remember anything about the jp outside of fat jokes.
---

the jp was a huge Aerith fan

perhaps the biggest
---

a gigantic one, some might say
---

in before SND comes in wondering how we've allowed such a toxic culture of bullying surrounding the contests
---

46.



This match feels wholly unsatisfying. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the game of the decade, at least at that point in time. Now is obviously another story, but it was the strongest game that year.

You could feel the users of gamefaqs saying to themselves, "what have we done?", as perennial lightning rod Super Smash Bros. Brawl moved towards winning the contest. They preferred Brawl in each match, but it just didn't belong here. Not a game with such a backlash. And so, by the time we get to the semifinal against Fallout 3, it just kinda... stopped being beloved. Fallout 3 put up a similar number to Twilight Princess, a game that kinda killed Fallout 3 the year prior. It was nearly a doubling, and now it was at 46%. Something wasn't right.

Meanwhile, Majora's Mask, that plucky Zelda underdog, had all the buzz. It had heart. It had creativity. It had all the things that Brawl lacked. And so, the voting public kinda abandoned the strongest game and went for the best narrative. It's understandable. Brawl isn't GOTD quality. But the match just never felt right. Run this as a round 2 match and I think Brawl wins it.

Wins it in 2010, of course. Run it now and Brawl loses to anything. We'll get there.
---

Yeah, there was definitely a concerted effort to try to get Brawl to lose in the final. Majora jumped out to a huge lead early and then Brawl chopped away at it the rest of the match, but the damage was done at that point.

*sigh* Should've been FFX.
---

Majora winning GotD is stupid on principle, but I still preferred it to Brawl winning.

Should've been FFX.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

Still the greatest successful comeback of all time. Sonic's entire 2006 run was really fun, actually.

too bad it's not fun to run in sonic 2006
---

FFX might have been able to beat Brawl that year, but the site didn't trust FFX to pull that off, so Majora's Mask got the push it needed to get past FFX.

The site also didn't want Brawl to win GotD because it was the biggest symbol of the Wii era and we were already about 2 years removed from the site turning on the Wii after Nintendo's epic failure of an E3 press conference in 2008.
---

If FFX was the best we could muster, then it must've been a shitty decade.
---

45.



Hierarchy. Status Quo. CLINKEROTH.

Mario just rocked 2005 all the way. He beat everyone you could throw at him, and he did it pretty easily. He felt kinda invincible. It felt like he could hang with at least Sephiroth. And then... nope. Sephiroth just tossed him aside like it didn't even matter what he did. Never doubt Clinkeroth in those early 00s, especially when Mario/Sephiroth is concerned. Mario can boost to heaven but he's not getting past the three headed beast during the golden years.
---

okay, I'm stopping there for tonight. we're getting into some heavy hitters so feel free to predict some upcoming matches, or just matches that you think deserve some notice.
---

Mario won literally two 15 minute blocks that entire match. Two.

Seriously one of the most impressive wins ever.
---

Man, that Majoras Mask run still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because I originally had it as the winner of the contest without any doubt in my mind. Then I let B8 slowly eat away at me and eventually talk me out of it. That was the last time I let B8 change my mind on the latter end of the bracket

If I had kept my bracket as i predicted then for sure i would have won the guru easily (I remember that much as I kept checking it all the way). Not sure about overall contest standings as I wasnt prize eligible then so didn't care

Samus/Tifa 2006's biggest influence was finally proving that pics mattered. The dominant view amongst the contest cognescenti at the time was that, outside of obvious jokes like Duke Milkem or Snake/Sora, pictures did not make a difference. Voters were not so stupid or so fickle as to not recognize or to not vote for someone based on their picture, especially someone at N9 level.

Even Solid S*** was explained away. Oh Frog was being bandwagoned, Bowser really was that strong, etc. etc. We'd even had Snake/Yoshi just four days earlier which seemed to drive the point home, when Snake performed about as expected based on his 2005 numbers, the picture making no difference, or so we thought.

Samus almost blowing the match was what finally laid that to rest for good.
---

transience posted...

But 2009 had it ever so barely beating Super Mario Kart, twice. I get LTTP. It's a top 5 game of all time. But Super Mario Kart is... not.

Lies and slander.
---

on the site, Elfboy. I might prefer SMK too.
---

What I really liked about the Cloud vs. Mario rematch was the irony of Cloud getting the win thanks to rallying, a fact which has decently important implications for contests as a whole (along with Cloud managing to shed his bad early vote).

Also, I've already posted about how Ryu didn't actually look good at all in his pre-Sephiroth matches something like three times, so I don't care to reiterate my points, but easy comparisons and a look at the results of the characters he beat can tell the story for me.
---

By the way I'm not sure I would put Chun-Li and Ryu that far apart really - I think one of the stories of 2018 was that female characters, and in particular pretty ones, generally did extremely well in this contest. I can think of a million examples of attractive women overperforming or even crushing expectations in this contest, and the only example I can think of of one underperforming off the top of my head is Yuna. (Monika I guess but that's a special case.) With Tifa > Sephiroth happening, I don't think I'd count out Chun-Li > Ryu either

44.



There's really not much to say here. This match is notable in that it broke the Noble Nine in a 1v1 match, but it wasn't unexpected or shocking by the time it happened. You saw the bracket and your eyes instantly shot to this match and said "oh, crap." It happened, Missingno screwed around a little and went under to Sephiroth of all dudes, and that was that.

Crono held even in the first five, had an awful update at :10 and was never able to get it within striking distance. For those keeping score, Crono had an awful 2006 losing to Sonic, an awful 2007 losing to Vincent, a miraculous 2008 where he somehow found the power to hold off Vincent, an awful 2009 when CT lost to Mario 64, and now he falls to a glitch. CTDS kept him afloat in 2008 but otherwise, this dude was just way past his prime.
---

43.



This result wasn't *completely* unexpected after round 1, but it would require a character to be nonlinear in a way that we hadn't seen before. L got another lucky draw with Kirby and DK splitting votes, allowing L-Block to skate through.

But it wasn't like it was close. L-Block didn't struggle with Kirby at all. This time, L-Block led the poll outright for the first 9 hours before finally relinquishing the lead to Kratos and settling into a comfortable second place. It finished with 31% against Laharl and Nathan Hale vs. 28% against Kratos and DK.

L-Block became known as the 28% and people started charting out all the permutations. Solid Snake would suck up most of the votes in round 3 so L-Block would probably skate through, but round 4 was a heavyweight match with two noble niners and one elite. This wasn't L-Block's contest yet but it was certainly the weirdest thing we'd ever seen.
---

transience posted...

Mac Arrowny posted...

I feel like Red vs. Blue > Cloud vs. Sephiroth at least deserves a spot on the list!

why? it's like taking 'what character do you want in smash?' polls and trying to apply it to the contest. red vs. blue's unique quality as rivals completely invalidates any kind of result there.

CaptainOfCrush posted...

I still find it weird that tumblr had enough people to pull off that Undertale run. Maybe I'm an internet recluse but I almost never hear about that site.

I'm pretty sure twitter was the main source of the rally. we just tied it to tumblr because it's so sterotypically representative of undertale -- kinda like how we blamed the Tifa rally on hentai.

okay, I'm home now - time to move on with the list!

Was there any evidence that the Tifa rally didn't come from all those hentai subreddits?
---

42.



You know, obviously this match is big, but it wasn't until next round where we actually saw that Draven was capable of. This one happened but it wasn't overwhelming, and it was Jak and Chie, two weak characters. It wasn't like when L-Block led Kirby out of the gate, and it wasn't like Undertale's gigantic comeback against Mass Effect 3. This one was decidedly lower in scale.

Draven's natural strength was at 21% before the rally started, which is notable because Amaterasu recently beat him like 89-11 or something. Amaterasu alone was better than these two combined, and by quite a lot. Some of that is surely antivoting but still. Chie and Jak are awful.

I went back through the analysis crew topics and we all unanimously, even Guest, picked against Draven in round 2. Now, the Crew is notorious for being slow to react to new trends because we're so blinded by years of contest knowledge. But it kinda goes to show you that this wasn't the match that changed the world. It was just the one that allowed Draven to survive and build up awareness before the bomb went off.
---

I did the math back in 2013, and that rally was very beatable next round which is why very few people went for the upset. In a match between X, Ryu and Draven almost no one on GameFAQs was going to vote Draven and around 9k votes isn't going to be enough to win.
---

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Sephiroth looked shaky the entire contest... except for that time he demolished Ryu. Sephiroth was kinda strange all contest long.

If you throw out Seph/Tifa and base their indirect strength on Samus/Mario 1, everything else makes sense. That requires you to take Samus/Mario 1 at face value though, and for whatever reason, people still want to believe in Samus > Mario.
---

CaptainOfCrush posted...

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/sc2k5/br63-8.jpg

Where the heck did someone find a picture of Mario mean muggin like that. I wonder if they made it?

Its from Super Mario 64 DS i believe
---

ShatteredElysium posted...

Man, that Majoras Mask run still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because I originally had it as the winner of the contest without any doubt in my mind. Then I let B8 slowly eat away at me and eventually talk me out of it. That was the last time I let B8 change my mind on the latter end of the bracket

If I had kept my bracket as i predicted then for sure i would have won the guru easily (I remember that much as I kept checking it all the way). Not sure about overall contest standings as I wasnt prize eligible then so didn't care

I had it beating FFX and losing to Brawl but pulled back because everyone else on the board had it losing to Pokemon (which never sat right with me so thankfully I at least kept it going as far as I did)
---

That Draven comeback over Jak is still vivid in my memory. I was out with some friends at a bar and was refreshing the match on my phone the entire night. We went out to grab some food after leaving and that's when I started seeing Draven make heavy cuts and couldn't believe it. I was rooting for him at the time.

That sentiment changed pretty quickly, though.
---

41.



2018 had a ton of photo finishes, but the most important match of the year was a massacre. Zelda went into the match as a surprise favourite due to Squall struggling a little and Zelda doing really well, but this was worse than anyone really anticipated. Zelda *killed* Squall here.

We've had a number of results where characters can be extrapolated out to look like they're a top 5 character. The most obvious one in my memory is Tifa/Vyse from 2005 where Tifa put up a Cloud-like performance that suggested she might win the whole contest. Turns out, Vyse just kinda dropped off a cliff. The Zelda match had all of those possibilities here. Maybe Squall fell off a cliff, and maybe Zelda was great, but we've never had a case of a character going from being a top 20-ish guy to being a legit top 2 or 3.

You can define a lot of contests by a single character. 2005 was Mario, 2006 was Snake, 2007 was L-Block, etc. 2018 was undoubtedly the year of Zelda and it started with this match.

I think of this match as being a reverse Squall/Luigi. Instead of Squall going from being just decent in 2002 to a potential NN breaker from 2003 onwards, Zelda went from being decent to being a legit top 5 guy. I really wonder if she stays there or if she falls back to the pack, because this kind of performance is unprecedented. Whenever we do another character battle, the conversation will probably start with... okay, probably some rally character. But after that it will be on Zelda and Sephiroth first and foremost.
---