Board 8 > transience presents: the top 75 matches in contest history: part 2, the top 25.

(+) Yeah! (+)

LeonhartFour posted...

xp1337 posted...

And it looked like it might work because the rally topic was taken down on the LoL reddit, but then they put it back up with a sticky and the very next update was Draven just absolutely stomping on Snake's throat and the match was immediately over at that point.

I was reading through the old CBIX Stat Topics (because I had somehow lost the trend charts for that contest and cn's site was down and had been down for a while), and I had totally forgotten that somebody lied to the Subreddit admin that B8 had deliberately created and mass downvoted a rally topic so it wouldn't appear high on the Subreddit (since you could only have one rally topic at a time). The admin believed him and pinned the rally topic to the top. I think Draven had like a 1200 vote update on the very next update and we all knew it was sadly over.

Wasn't this Smurf? IIRC, he posted (under an alt) on Board 8 that he had created the current rally topic on the subreddit, and that he was planning to delete his post shortly, which would cause the rally to collapse and have to start over. It was a lie (the person who had made the topic came forward) but the B8 post was brought to the subreddit's attention, and they stickied the topic. What a traitor.
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LeonhartFour posted...

xp1337 posted...

And it looked like it might work because the rally topic was taken down on the LoL reddit, but then they put it back up with a sticky and the very next update was Draven just absolutely stomping on Snake's throat and the match was immediately over at that point.

I was reading through the old CBIX Stat Topics (because I had somehow lost the trend charts for that contest and cn's site was down and had been down for a while), and I had totally forgotten that somebody lied to the Subreddit admin that B8 had deliberately created and mass downvoted a rally topic so it wouldn't appear high on the Subreddit (since you could only have one rally topic at a time). The admin believed him and pinned the rally topic to the top. I think Draven had like a 1200 vote update on the very next update and we all knew it was sadly over.

This was a huge deal on the LoL subreddit. One thing they are extremely touchy about is vote manipulation. There was a lot of pushback against the mods at first that the rally threads should be removed (off-topic, where does it stop etc) or at least not be allowed to be renewed (i.e. you'd get one rally thread, but when it dropped naturally it shouldn't be replaced) but when people were convinced we were messing with their site they went pretty mad.
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I'd hesitate to believe it was Smurf. Smurf and ExTha are the 2 least reliable people on the board, who are constantly trying to take credit for rallies they had no part in.
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The posts should be in the stat archive somewhere. Also the mod from LoL subreddit pretty much told us that that was the reason the topic got stickied.
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4.



I've spent entirely too much of my life thinking about this match and what may or may not have happened. I'll hit the high points: Cloud was ahead and looked like he was going to win before, as you've come to expect, Mario made a huge comeback and won in the last minutes. I remember voting, coming back at the end of the match and being unusually mad that Mario had somehow turned it around. I didn't make a bracket but Cloud was my informal pick to win the contest. I'd write more about this if I had data, but I only have 16 year old memories and oral histories to work off of here.

Besides, there's a ton of weird stuff to sort through with this match. Mario Sunshine came out on the day of this match. We've seen this countless times with other matches and let me tell you, it doesn't really matter that much. Aeris took on Zelda on the day FF12 came out and still got butchered. A Nintendo fansite called Planet Gamecube linked here on this match, and that probably helped Mario. But how much?

Here's the thing: this match is way out of line with other matches. Mario/Cloud had 22,000 more votes than the second most popular poll -- Mario/Crono, a match where we know there was possibly as many as 3,000 stuff votes. It has more than 30,000 more than the final. Is Planet Gamecube big enough to warrant 30,000 votes? It would need to come from Nintendo.com for that to be true. So clearly something else happened.

Is it vote stuffing, is it a much wider array of sites linking here, am I underestimating Planet Gamecube? I mean, anything is possible with Mario/Cloud. We have no idea. This match surely shouldn't have had the result that it did. I am hesitant without data to come to a conclusion here, but my priors say that this match is complete and utter BS.

Mario/Cloud's legacy is complicated. It shows us that some real nonsense can happen in a poll, sure. But I don't know how much that matters. We knew immediately that Mario/Cloud was nonsense. Its bigger legacy is probably in historically underrating Cloud, but only for 2003. I don't know what the precontest picks looked like, but I bet people still backed Cloud a fair amount. Everyone already knew that Cloud was a gamefaqs superstar since this website and Final Fantasy VII have been inexorably linked since 1997. Even now, 7,385 days since its release, it's still in the top 100 games, 3 years longer than second place (FFX). You don't need contest results to understand that if there was a gamefaqs hall of fame, FF7 is the first game inducted.

The biggest thing might be that Cloud was robbed of the 2002 championship. I think Link still wins that easy though. He beat Sephiroth with 56%. Link/Cloud is probably a 54-46ish affair that doesn't turn around until 2003. This match leaves me feeling empty because I don't have solid conclusions on it. It's an all-time classic for sure, but utimately, extremely unsatisfying. At least with Mario/Crono, you have an idea of what happened. With this one, the numbers are so far off the page that it looks more like Draven or L-Block than anything else.
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Oh man..This match. One of the most talked matches of all time. Also the votes were that big? No way all these are from rallies.
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I'm appreciating the boldness of having Mario/Samus (deservedly) in the top three.

Having it that high though also disappoints me Magus/Knuckles isn't higher. Those matches are to some degree linked for me as evidence against x-stats that are hard to simply argue against. After 2004 allowed x-stats to guide us to very successful brackets, 2005 broke our backs and taught us not to take shortcuts. You can have reasonable and legitimate arguments in favor for what x-stats offer, but if someone says "Magus/Knuckles" or more likely "Mario/Samus," there's not a great short response to counter that.

Plus the Mario Boost complicates the conversation, but that doesn't stop people from being top-tier obnoxious about the whole thing.
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HaRRicH posted...

but if someone says "Magus/Knuckles" or more likely "Mario/Samus," there's not a great short response to counter that.

sam fisher factor
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I think Magus/Knuckles is pretty high. I just think the world of the Starcraft run.
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Samus Mario way too high imo. It's so irrelevant to anyone who isn't a stats nerd
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Samus/Mario should be high but its artificially boosted. It's brought up way way more than it ever needs to be.
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Samus/Mario has completely changed a lot of how I view the upper tier, it's an important match

Ill be interested to see your guys lists after Im done
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Hot take: I would rank Magus/Knuckles over Mario/Samus. Mario/Samus, at this point, is remembered more because certain people won't let it go. It changed how we view the upper tier but not *that* much - it just meant that nothing Nintendo (barring Link) had a chance against Mario. The match was indicative more of the 2015 Nintendo boost as a whole, and there was already plenty of evidence towards that.

Magus/Knuckles is maybe the most shocked I've ever seen the board. That match completely demolished faith in the x-stats, faith that was never fully restored. Mario/Samus was never a done deal - IT'S FREAKING MARIO was a rallying cry from the start, and looking at the Oracle, by the time it rolled around, half of the board was siding with Mario anyway. 0 people picked Magus to lose to Knuckles - and quite a few picked him to win the Division. Considering how much the x-stats influence contestgoers' picks, I'd say learning how unreliable they can be at times was worth more than learning "oh, Nintendo is OP now".
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3.



To understand why Mario vs. Samus is #3, we need to talk about extrapolated statistics.

X-stats "came out" in 2003, after creativename used them to win the oracle challenge that year. He was looking at results like Cloud/Sonic and Sephiroth/Mario to predict the future, and it did well for him. The 2004 contest was a disaster of a bracket, with SFF matches everywhere, but it had one advantage for those who followed the contest closely: things more or less stayed the same. If you picked Link over Cloud and followed the x-stats, you could have easily finished in the top 50. The biggest upset of that contest was probably Sora/Hayabusa, which was only an upset because Aeris/Sora happened the year prior and screwed Sora's placement over. With matches like Link/Ganondorf and Cloud/Squall, SFF gained a whole lot of clarity after 2004. The villain contest was largely meaningless.

The stats topic is named as such because, once upon a time, it was used exclusively for stats. When I first started reading the topic in early 05 or so, I read it for about a month before feeling comfortable enough to post there. It was a much more serious topic back then. Everything anyone discussed was sourced, and there was a fundamental truthiness to the whole affair. The users who partook were pretty dogmatic believers in the contest as an affair of statistics.

If there was one match that demonstrated this approach, it was Mario vs. Samus. Samus had gotten 41% on Cloud in 2004, while Mario (finally) lost clean to Crono who got 37% on Link. If that wasn't enough, Samus had actually slightly outperformed Crono on Link in 2003. She had held up vs Link and was indirectly stronger than Mario. About two thirds of the board took Samus, with maybe 20% taking Mario and the rest Crono. The argument for Mario became known as "it's freaking Mario" and many who ran that argument went against the dogmatic nature of the x-stats, partially because they believed Mario would just beat Samus but also because there was a sense from that crowd that the stats had largely reduced the romantic nature of contests into a bunch of stat values. They weren't totally wrong, but they were *extremely* annoying about it. Mario vs. Samus became a battleground.

The 2005 contest offered something that 2004 did not: a fundamental shift in preferences. People point to Knuckles over Magus here, but actually, the stats were ahead of the curve on that one with how some matches just didn't seem right for someone of Magus's rep. 2004's Crono/Magus match actually obscured his fall an extra year. That didn't stop people from pointing to it and blasting the stats, but many of those people weren't out to make genuine arguments. It was an argument against math as much as anything.

It was the Nintendo Boost that screwed us over. Zelda killed Vivi. Kirby wrecked Tidus. Bowser whipped Ryu. And Mario wasn't the same Mario. He was killing everyone in his path. Samus was.. okay, but she went up against Ganondorf and couldn't break 60 while Mario was putting 62 on Zero. On paper, they were about equal.
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And then Mario just annihilated Samus. It was probably the single worst day in board 8 history, from someone who wasn't really here in 2003. The stats people got destroyed here, and while a lot of people had jumped ship or admitted that Samus had a really good chance to drop this, not many people expected a killing. The oracle average was 50.37% and Mario outdid that by 9%. And the people who had Mario wouldn't let that one go for months, years, you name it. This was their chance to obliterate the concept of the stats. They got it right: it's freaking Mario.

This match has had consequences for years and years. Every time Samus comes up against Nintendo, you just wait for the fraud alerts to go off. Samus almost broke the Noble Nine against Tifa -- of course, she was a fraud. The 2006 battle royale featured Samus, Mario and Link -- every person in the world picked Samus to go out first. Super Metroid faced Super Mario Kart and you just didn't know how low she could go. Super Mario Galaxy was expected to beat Super Metroid because Metroid is that bad in the face of the SFF king. Samus was a top 5 character but her reputation was much less than that. When Snake started blowing people up in 2006, everyone was ready to put Samus in the garbage because of 2005 (well, and the Tifa match in 2006, but 2005 moreso). This match led to people believing in 'hierarchies' for years, and I still have a hard time shaking them off.

The question for years and years has always been: did Mario just level up and SFF Samus in 2005, or was this a case of Samus being stronger but the fanbase siding with the weaker Mario? Samus's argument for her has always been that she pulls from many different fanbases: 'mature' fans like Metroid, kids like Smash Bros., she's iconic which boosts her power up.. but those same arguments cave in when she meets someone who trumps her like Mario. We've never had a sufficient answer for this. Mario and Samus are always so close to each other that it's hard to get a good read. If we had gotten a chance to see Samus/Zelda or Samus/Cloud this year, it would have been fascinating to answer that for good. Unfortunately, Mario Mario'd Samus at the end of the poll yet again. He's such a goddamn villain.

Mario/Samus is a very insider baseball, board 8 kind of matchup. It didn't break the internet like some bigger matches have. It doesn't have the historical impact of the top 2, or even some of the lower ones like Draven or Undertale or whatever. But in terms of longstanding impact amongst people who follow the contests closely and know them well enough to list off contest rivalries and controversies and whatnot, I'd argue that there isn't a single match in contest history that's had a larger impact than Mario/Samus.
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transience posted...

And then Mario just annihilated Samus. It was probably the single worst day in board 8 history, from someone who wasn't really here in 2003.

This, I can agree with. Only one that can challenge this claim is Link/Draven.
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Phew, finally caught up (and just in time!)
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KamikazePotato posted...

Samus/Mario should be high but its artificially boosted. It's brought up way way more than it ever needs to be.

I think this is right. It's still an important match but I think it'd be further down the list if you didn't still have people crowing about it and shoving in the face of anyone they can whenever there is (or isn't!) an opportunity.
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Actually that would be a fun discussion - which matches have sparked the most "I-told-you-so" reactions? Mario/Samus is the obvious #1 but I'm honestly drawing a blank after that.

Regardless, that was a really good writeup. This has been a fun topic.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Actually that would be a fun discussion - which matches have sparked the most "I-told-you-so" reactions? Mario/Samus is the obvious #1 but I'm honestly drawing a blank after that.

Regardless, that was a really good writeup. This has been a fun topic.

Vincent/Kerrigan is probably up there but I'm also drawing a bit of a blank after that.
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I can definitely see the importance in Mario/Samus proving that even (or especially?) between elites sometimes the poll has a life of its own completely separate from the natural strength of the characters. That sometimes you need to step back and think - faced with these two, or these four, who's the site really picking?
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Kotetsu534 posted...

I can definitely see the importance in Mario/Samus proving that even (or especially?) between elites sometimes the poll has a life of its own completely separate from the natural strength of the characters. That sometimes you need to step back and think - faced with these two, or these four, who's the site really picking?

People always say stuff like this but I still don't understand why the answer isn't Samus

I hate to admit it, but I had Samus in that poll. I was convinced by the X-stats.
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lT'S

FUCKING

MARIO

Valid in 2005, but definitely not valid anymore. I had to get students/classmates I was tutoring to vote for Mario in the loser bracket rematch or Samus beats him this year. Imagine being in vet nursing school and a TA randomly goes 'hey random thought here but can you guys do me a quick favor?', it was so funny. Mario only won by 19 and I had 15 students in class, so yeah. Good stuff.
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Mario/Samus invented lol xstats, but I think you've been hanging around the stats topics too much if you think it's our third most important match ever. IIRC the average lay-user didn't give it a second thought.
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2.



The internet was alive this weekend. I vividly remember L-Block/Link being on a weekend and thinking that it helped L-Block. Kotaku, engadget, neogaf, they were all talking about this match. Twitter was nascent and reddit was essentially nonexistent, so blogs and forums were really our main source of gaming news in those days. And everyone was super freaking high on this match.

I"m pretty sure this is our biggest vote total ever, which feels right. This match is probably the most anticipated match ever. It certainly was for me. The first 10 minutes of this match is something I will probably carry into old age. L-Block came out killing everything at the freeze. 55% on Link, Cloud and Solid Snake. An 825 vote lead over Link. The lead is 1330 at :10. By :20 we've already passed 2000 votes which was the magic number for comebacks in those pre-Draven, pre-Undertale days. L-Block held strong at 45% after one hour and had a lead of 3500 votes. I could go back and read the stats topic for this one and just relive everything.

The match ended up looking kinda respectable at the end: a mere 7000 vote win. But it was up 5000 votes after 2 hours. Link was never even close to being in this match. That fact alone was just amazing to see for anyone who had followed these contests for 5 years. This is a internet moment. People still talk about "do you remember seeing that shit when a Tetris block beat Link in the gamefaqs character battle?" casually. That's why this match is important.

The following contest, we nominated Sandbags and Cubes and you name it. L-Block brought on a whole new list of contest terrors for us to have to deal with. By 2013, we had seen ? Blocks, Matt the Mii, Hogger, Mudkip, WWF No Mercy, you name it. That isn't the half of it with this match though. An organic rally that nobody really initiated turned into the biggest gamefaqs contest match of all time.
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wow that wwf no mercy shade
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you might say there was

*puts on shades*

no mercy
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I will never forgive the Crew for siding with No Mercy on that one
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1.



HELL YEAH TRE WE DID IT. PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE WILL WONDER WHAT THE HELL THIS WAS ALL ABOUT AND JUST WE'LL SIT BACK WITH OUR N-GAGES IN HAND AND SAY "YEAH, THAT WAS US."
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Time to strike then!
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You bought an N-Gage, didn't you?
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A+
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Honestly, Link/Jay Solano was a better contest match than most actual contest matches. It had comebacks and drama and everything!
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1.



As if there was ever any doubt. I generally subscribe to the idea that gamefaqs contests may not have made it to 2018 if we didn't have a single result that put Link's absolute dominance in doubt.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, you kinda need everything to go your way to beat the King. You need a game like Kingdom Hearts to pull people who wouldn't normally play a Final Fantasy game to get to know a dude like Cloud. You need CELDA to manifest and hurt Link in the process. You need a site shift that favours Square in general. And even then, you still need a fantastic night vote to slow down Link's absolute dominance in the day.

Cloud/Sonic and Seph/Mario foreshadowed this, as I've said in like 6 other writeups, and Link just wasn't able to keep up with Cloud in 03. In a way, I'm almost surprised Link managed to get close to 48% on 03 Cloud. 03 Cloud is a killer.

This match is so ginormous that I honestly forget that it wasn't the 2003 final. It's like, did you know that Daigo's full parry on Justin Wong (you know the one) was in losers finals, and that he got beat by a Yun player named KO in grand finals 3-1? That's how I feel about this match. Link/Cloud is an endless "rivalry", a rivalry that is now like 13-1, but that 1 time will always make this seem bigger than it is. For one day, Cloud breathed life into these contests as we saw Link lose his only match against an actual character in 15 years.
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Link/Cloud is the match that made me aware of GameFAQs Contests. I remember looking at the result and going "huh, really?" Checked the board and was interested in how much people were freaking out.
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Final Fantasy always wins. ;_;
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

Final Fantasy always wins. ;_;

time to back some plucky underdogs to shake things up
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No Mercy is a quality game imo
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The Mana Sword posted...

wow that wwf no mercy shade

Seriously. The game was over-hyped and flopped in the contest, but WWF No Mercy is one of the greatest games of all time.
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No Mercy is probably second or third on my list of favorite games from GotD.

Why anyone thought it was beating Fire Emblem: PoR is beyond me though.
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And this was a great topic series. Quality work sir.
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I'm rereading some of the 2013 Contest Crew writeups and it's amazing. The last 1/3 of the writeups are a gradual descent into insanity. Tons of picks that were blatantly not happening, but chosen anyway because chaos reigned. People picking percentages of like 99% for one entrant. Every writeup for every match exudes this sense of growing dread. I apparently got so burnt out by everything that my last 15 writeups or so were 2 sentences long.

Seems fitting for that contest.
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you were the worst offender there, if I remember right. you moved into Ulti writeups once the sincerity of the results came into question.
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okay, here's the full list. want to argue about it? I hope you'll post your picks alongside taking mine apart. I'm really interested to see how others feel.

75. Phoenix/Vincent/Mewtwo (2013)
74. Link to the Past/Super Metroid (2004)
73. Kirby/L-Block/Laharl/Nathan Hale (2007)
72. Metal Gear Solid 2/Shadow of the Colossus (2010)
71. Cloud/Zelda (2018)
70. Frog/Snake (2004)
69. Metal Gear Solid 4/Shadow of the Colossus (2010)
68. Pikachu/Mega Man 1 (2018)
67. Vincent/Kerrigan (2005)
66. Sephiroth/Missingno (2010)
65. Mario/Crono (2005)
64. Sonic/Mega Man (2005)
63. Cloud/Snake/Sephiroth/Kirby (2008)
62. Kirby/Tidus (2005)
61. Kefka/Crono (2003)
60. Link/Crono/Vincent/Pikachu (2008)
59. Link/Mario (2002)
58. Master Chief/Yuna/Vercetti/Parappa (2007)
57. Mario/Cloud (2018)
56. Mega Man/Sephiroth (2002)
55. Mario/Samus 1 + 2 (2018)
54. Zelda/Final Fantasy (2006)
53. Mario/Vivi/Ganondorf (2013)
52. Mario/Shadow (2003)
51. Sephiroth/Tifa (2018)
50. Super Metroid/Majora's Mask (2015)
49. Sonic/Crono (2006)
48. Snake/Bowser (2005)
47. Samus/Tifa (2006)
46. Majora's Mask/Smash Bros. Brawl (2010)
45. Sephiroth/Mario (2005)
44. Crono/Missingno (2010)
43. Kirby/L-Block/Kratos/Donkey Kong (2007)
42. Draven/Chie/Jak (2013)
41. Squall/Zelda (2018)
40. Chrono Trigger/Final Fantasy X (2015)
39. Vincent/Squall (2005)
38. Cloud/Link/Sephiroth/Snake (2006 Battle Royale day 3)
37. Sephiroth/Mario (2003)
36. Mario/Crono (2004)
35. Undertale/Smash Bros. Melee (2015)
34. Link/Crono/Snake/Cloud (2008)
33. Crono/Snake (2002)
32. Link/Cloud (2005)
31. Super Smash Bros. Melee/Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2010)
30. Samus/Snake (2006)
29. Chrono Trigger/Super Smash Bros. Melee (2015)
28. Snake/Mega Man (2006)
27. Master Chief/L-Block/Snake/Dante (2007)
26. Majora's Mask/Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal (2010)
25. Chrono Trigger/Zelda: LTTP (Spring 2004)
24. Final Fantasy X/SSBM (Spring 2004)
23. Halo/Starcraft (Spring 2004)
22. Crono/L-Block/Pikachu/Alucard (2008)
21. Link/Cloud (2004)
20. Zelda: Majora's Mask/Final Fantasy X (2010)
19. Link/Crono/Vincent/Zero (2007)
18. FF7/Ocarina/LTTP/OOT and the FF7/OOT 1v1 (2009)
17. Squall/Luigi (2003)
16. Draven/Mega Man X/Ryu (2013)
15. Magus/Knuckles (2005)
14. Pokemon RBY/Zelda: Majora's Mask/Banjo Kazooie/Perfect Dark (2009)
13. Sonic/Samus (2002)
12. Starcraft/SSBM (Spring 2004)
11. Undertale/Mass Effect 3 (2015)
10. Starcraft/Wind Waker (Spring 2004)
9. Snake/L-Block/Squall/Sonic (2007)
8. Mario/Crono (2003)
7. Final Fantasy VII/Ocarina of Time (Spring 2004)
6. Draven/Link/Shepard (2013)
5. Mario/Crono (2002)
4. Mario/Cloud (2002)
3. Mario/Samus (2005)
2. L-Block/Link/Cloud/Snake (2007)
1. Cloud/Link (2003)

and for fun, here's how many from each contest made the list. my actual contest rankings would look a lot different than this.

2005: 10
2007: 7
Spring 2004: 7
2002: 6
2003: 6
2018: 6
2010 (GOTD): 6
2015 (Games): 6
2006: 5
2013: 5
2008: 4
2004: 3
2009 (BGE2): 2
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I expected Link/Draven/Shepard to be higher, but I don't disagree. I don't know if Cloud/Link 2003 saved contests, but I think Link would have been retired by now if not for it. It was the one time he ever looked vulnerable.
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2005 confirmed best contest
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

Mario/Samus invented lol xstats, but I think you've been hanging around the stats topics too much if you think it's our third most important match ever. IIRC the average lay-user didn't give it a second thought.

Nope. Amazing Telephone made that joke in 2004 and I ran with it.
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transience posted...

1.



As if there was ever any doubt. I generally subscribe to the idea that gamefaqs contests may not have made it to 2018 if we didn't have a single result that put Link's absolute dominance in doubt.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, you kinda need everything to go your way to beat the King. You need a game like Kingdom Hearts to pull people who wouldn't normally play a Final Fantasy game to get to know a dude like Cloud. You need CELDA to manifest and hurt Link in the process. You need a site shift that favours Square in general. And even then, you still need a fantastic night vote to slow down Link's absolute dominance in the day.

Cloud/Sonic and Seph/Mario foreshadowed this, as I've said in like 6 other writeups, and Link just wasn't able to keep up with Cloud in 03. In a way, I'm almost surprised Link managed to get close to 48% on 03 Cloud. 03 Cloud is a killer.

This match is so ginormous that I honestly forget that it wasn't the 2003 final. It's like, did you know that Daigo's full parry on Justin Wong (you know the one) was in losers finals, and that he got beat by a Yun player named KO in grand finals 3-1? That's how I feel about this match. Link/Cloud is an endless "rivalry", a rivalry that is now like 13-1, but that 1 time will always make this seem bigger than it is. For one day, Cloud breathed life into these contests as we saw Link lose his only match against an actual character in 15 years.

Draven is an "actual character".

Good topic bro!
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