He is the main character of one of the best video game series', one that has been consistently good for more than 20 years. Taken as a whole the Mario series might be better than the Zelda series, but both characters deserve their contest strength.
Well for me it's A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker vs. Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (yeah Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess are great and I really enjoy them, but I don't consider myself to be a big fan of either of those three). Not to mention there are three Mario games that I prefer to any Legend of Zelda.
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Currently Playing - Mega Man 2 Hopefully Next Up - Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Brood War
I'd say that a popular video game character is deserving of winning contests based on popularity yes. I don't like him, he's pretty bland to me. But uh, what can I say?
Dude is a popular character. He wins popularity contests.
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I do not. Early in the contests he probably deserved it. 2k2 was a legit win and 2k4 was a semi-legit comeback. Zelda as a series hasn't actually been good for a long time now, though, and his continued love is totally suspect in my view. Link is mostly carried by a 13 year old game that is way better in retrospect than it is in actual reality. OoT and everything before it was pretty revolutionary, everything since has been utterly derivative. How he continues to be top dog amazes me almost as much as The Legend of of Zelda did when I was seven.
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"Principally I hate and detest the animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth" - Jonathan Swift BT with the victory!
A character contest should be about how good a character is. Link is not a good character (or a character at all - he's just an avatar). So of course Link doesn't deserve to win or even get past more than 1-2 rounds.
But then you realise that expecting people to vote for the better character is expecting too much of people.
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Video game characters are by and large just embodiments of their franchises. Zelda is a great franchise, perhaps the best, so Link does deserve his high popularity.
It's not like there are many "good" characters in video games anyway, in the literary sense. Most "deep" characters are really just variations on some badass template. If we were going on literary merits we'd probably have to take a character from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or something, and nobody played that.
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"The U.S. should detonate all its nukes on its own soil."-Terran [Evil Republican] Play Der Langrisser.
If anything I prefer Mario to win it all. I personally also don't see it as a "storytelling character" contest either. I'd rather have a Mario plushie than an...Andrew Ryan plushie.
ChichiriMuyo posted... I do not. Early in the contests he probably deserved it. 2k2 was a legit win and 2k4 was a semi-legit comeback. Zelda as a series hasn't actually been good for a long time now, though, and his continued love is totally suspect in my view. Link is mostly carried by a 13 year old game that is way better in retrospect than it is in actual reality. OoT and everything before it was pretty revolutionary, everything since has been utterly derivative. How he continues to be top dog amazes me almost as much as The Legend of of Zelda did when I was seven.
Wow most of the reason why I say that Link doesn't deserve his popularity is because of Ocarina of Time being so strong in comparison to everything else (sans FF7, and even then there's still a surprisingly large gap there). Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess are not fully deserving of their contest strengths either (yeah TP is better than both N64 Zeldas, but they're all overrated in regards to contest strength). The Wind Waker, on the other hand, is perfectly fine where it is.
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Currently Playing - Mega Man 2 Hopefully Next Up - Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Brood War
He's not deep and complex, but he is indeed a character, in the same way Mickey Mouse is a character.
Not talking does not make you not a character, or just an avatar or whatever. Actions define character, and Link has plenty of actions. Actually, Link, or at least certain versions of him, is a good example of getting across a character's personality without talking.
And that's what makes him likeable, likeable enough to vote for (and have pretty much universal appeal) beyond just being representative of a great series.
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