Board 8 > The 128 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time - The Top 64

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's an evil being that inhabits a mask.

whoops, not the greatest post to start a new page. =x

28. Solid Snake vs. Tanner (2004) R1

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a5608d38.jpg

Solid Snake 94.3% 74251
Tanner 5.7% 4492
TOTAL VOTES 78743
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(2)Solid_Snake_vs_(15)Tanner_2004
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1733-20xx-division-round-1-solid-snake-vs-tanner

Most legendary characters in contest history are legendary because of their strength. Links contest wins, Clouds popularity, Frog and Marios clutches. Tanner, however, has to be the only character who is legendary due to his weakness. Tanners name echoes down the corridors of history not with a chorus of cheers, but with a peal of laughter, a reputation as one the biggest failures GameFAQS has ever seen. And there would be no opportunity for redemption or reevaluation either. Because after the match in question, he would never be seen in a contest ever again.

Going into things that year, no one expected this match to be of much interest. Due to the company cap, the lower seeds were littered with entrants from less popular companies/series, who all stood little chance of doing anything interesting, and even less of a chance of anyone caring about whether or not they did. Tanner was of a piece with all this, just an average fodder character on par with someone like JC Denton. He was the star of Driv3r, which had just been released that summer, so it was assumed while Snake would still get in the mid 80s on him, Tanners recent release would prevent him from being *completely* bottom of the barrel. There was no real fanbase for Tanner that appeared on the board, but, well, that was probably just because his game was casual bait. I mean, he did get enough noms to make it in, right? How bad could he possibly be?

Quite bad it turned out. From the moment the match started, Snake was putting out numbers that we had never seen before in a Character Contest. He was over 90% as soon as the match started, and he kept going up from there, hitting 93% at the 6 minute work, and after a gradual increase throughout the rest of the match, increased that number even further to 94.30%, just short of what Zelda had done to Adventure earlier that year, but still setting a Character Battle record that has yet to be broken. Tanners final vote total of 4,492 would also be the the least amount of votes any contest entrant would ever get in a 1v1 match with this level of votals. It took Tanner 6 and a half hours to get to 1,000 votes, something which I had trouble calculating at first, since I thought I was looking at the wrong column in the update table for the match, as the column I was looking at would occasionally not go up at all. Thats how horrible Tanner was doing. From the very start, we realized we were looking at something remarkable. As the match went on, people started doing some back of the envelope math to see what other characters would get on Tanner, and the results were hilarious. Tails would break 90% on Tanner. *Gordon Freeman* would break 90% on him if our calculations were correct. At that point, I think that everyone stopped the calculations and let the match play out. To add insult to injury, the fact that Tanner was doing this against Snake, who at this time was considered the weak link of the Noble Nine, was all the more pathetic. Tanners one shot at redemption was that the Snake we were seeing now was some kind of beastly version of the character we hadnt seen before. But nope, 2004 would end up being Snakes worst year on record, and Tanners final X-Stats value would be far and away the lowest we had ever seen, so low that you could use it as a basis for measurement, e.g. This characters X-Stat Value is __ Tanners.

One of the most enduring things about Tanner though would be the boards attempt to find someone that was even weaker, which we started at almost immediately. The following contest Agent 47 was somewhat nonsensically even dubbed Neo-Tanner, a prediction which did not pan out. We eventually settled on Jay Solano as the best option for a real Neo-Tanner contender: a generic looking main character from a N-Gage exclusive game. You couldnt get any worse than that. Of course, Ceej, apparently not really getting the joke, put Jay Solano in a board only Bonus Match after the 2006 contest, which Link obviously lost, lulz apparently more important to the board that actually putting our research to good use. In the end, Tanners mystique would remain. Yes, we would eventually find two characters worse than Tanner in the form of Spring Breeze Dancin and Chester, but those two were in a contest with 200+ entrants. Thats not really the same. The fact that someone barely more popular than those two managed to make it into a field of *64* beggars belief, and puts Tanner on a pedestal which, despite his horrible performance, no one else can reach.

There was so much glee watching a character be that bad

A true legend

Yesmar_ posted...

Tanner was of a piece with all this, just an average fodder character on par with someone like JC Denton. He was the star of Driv3r, which had just been released that summer, so it was assumed while Snake would still get in the mid 80s on him, Tanners recent release would prevent him from being *completely* bottom of the barrel. There was no real fanbase for Tanner that appeared on the board, but, well, that was probably just because his game was casual bait. I mean, he did get enough noms to make it in, right? How bad could he possibly be?

I maintain that this would have probably been true about Tanner, except he drew Snake. Anyone else, Tanner probably draws just enough to just be as weak as the likes of Serious Sam and Mr. Driller. But Snake was also capable of adding that extra touch of SFF on top of the deal, as both the Driver and MGS series were both action-adventure series that made their names in the PS1 era.

Serious Sam I had at least heard of. Tanner I had not.

I wonder how much could Link have gotten on Tanner?

To me, the most hilarious blowout has always been Mega Man vs. Ms. Pac-Man. It was the first 90+% blowout. A literal icon couldn't even manage 8%.

She thought his bullets were power pellets kek

My favorite blowout is Ammy > Draven

The follow up blowout of Serious Sam was fantastic too.

Haste_2 posted...

To me, the most hilarious blowout has always been Mega Man vs. Ms. Pac-Man. It was the first 90+% blowout. A literal icon couldn't even manage 8%.

are the Pac-Family the most SFF-able characters to exist

Probably. They don't exactly have a fanbase, but they're renowned enough by everyone knowing them that they have inherent popularity...that immediately tanks in the face of something more popular.

Jr. Pac-Man for CB11

That's the worst blowout because we knew the contest was over

It is impressive how each Draven match was horrible in its own unique way.

Well yeah, it's far beyond what Link would ever be expected to do

Which is why it sucked

The strongest LFF

I didn't consider the match shocking, just felt defeated.

Just as cherry on top, everyone who had X > Ryu, which was a fair amount considering how obvious X > Ryu should've been, actually got points here while the rest of us didn't.

I wanted to believe in Ryu > X

Not that it ultimately mattered

UltimaterializerX posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5227-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-2-draven-vs-ryu-vs-x

My favorite blowout is this one because of the sheer shock of it.

Crazy thing is, I predicted Draven > Jak > Chie correctly, because I thought League was popular enough to win one match.

This match, however? Never saw coming and knew the contest was done afterwards.

ZeroSignal posted...

Crazy thing is, I predicted Draven > Jak > Chie correctly, because I thought League was popular enough to win one match.

This match, however? Never saw coming and knew the contest was done afterwards.

This.

I think I predicted Jak to advance out of the first round in all of his debated matches

So close and yet so far

27. Mario vs. Samus Aran (2005) R4

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2cd2589b.jpg

Mario 59.79% 58304
Samus Aran 40.21% 39215
TOTAL VOTES 97519
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(1)Mario_vs_(1)Samus_Aran_2005
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2122-tournament-quarterfinal-mario-vs-samus-aran

The hype for most matches starts, at the earliest, on the day that the bracket is released. The hype for this match started the moment the previous contest ended. Or, to be more appropriate, from the moment that the X-Stats from the previous contest were released. Link, obviously, would retain his status as the strongest Nintendo character in the bracket. However, when it came to determining who the #2 of Nintendo was, we were in for a bit of a shock. Mario was the obvious choice, but when the Stats for 2004 were calculated, Mr. Nintendo himself was behind not only Link, but Samus as well. And it wasn't even close. If you were to take the 04 Stats at face value, Samus would beat Mario by a healthy margin. And there was no reason not to take them at face value, at least where Samus and Mario were concerned. Their paths seemed pretty clearcut, with no obvious SFF to affect the matches in question. If the two of them ever met up, Samus would have to be the favorite. The result of this little thought experiment didnt sit right with some Mario supporters however, and almost immediately one of the most iconic debates in contest history was born.

Its freaking Mario! That was the crude, one sentence summary of the pro-Mario position, but as a description, it works. Regardless of whether or not your explanation was common sense or reverse SFF, the reasoning was that regardless of who was more popular indirectly, Mario was ahead of Samus in the Nintendo hierarchy, something that would assert itself when the two characters met head to head. The argument for Samus was just as simple. She was ahead in the X-Stats and that was that. Common sense had nothing to do with it, and just because something didn't feel right didn't mean that it was wrong. For an entire year between contests this was the prospective battle to discuss, and interest never waned. What made the debate so enduring and the conversation around it so divisive was that it wasnt just the popularity of two characters that was being argued about. It was the whole concept of the X-Stats that was on trial. Our own Scopes Monkey Trial in a way.

When the bracket for 2005 was released, this match would move out of the hypothetical and into reality as it would be set up as the first match of Round 4, and the temperature surrounding the debate ratcheted up to another level. With the members of Clinkeroth removed to the Tournament of Champions, whoever won this match had the potential not just to make it to the next round, or settle a longstanding argument, but to potentially win the entire Main Bracket. While Mario certainly had his supporters, the faith in the X-Stats held, and the board would be primarily split between Samus and Crono in regards to who that Main Bracket winner would be. That being said, the debate over Mario Vs. Samus continued on. As has been brought up previously, 2005 might have been the height of people taking their prediction prowess extremely seriously, and this match was no exception. In fact, it might have been the one that served as the rule. Everyone had an opinion on how it would play out, and everyone made sure the rest of the board knew how right their opinion was.

Over the course of the first several rounds, one thing became clear. This was not the Mario we had seen for the first three contests. Buoyed by The Boost, he was looking stronger than he ever had before. Samus looked as strong as she had the previous year as well, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Mario, rSFF or no rSFF was on her level. While many kept the faith that Samus would win, they no longer had faith that she would do so easily, especially after a disappointing R3 victory over Ganon where she showed no trace of the Nintendo SFF shed need to beat Mario by the margins people had been predicting. Their Round 4 Match had suddenly become Mario's to lose, but, aside from Lopen, even Mario's biggest boosters had no clue what was coming. Mario would win, and he would win big, beating Samus 60/40 in a match that was over from its first seconds. The debate had been decided, and it had been decided decisively.

Mario would go on to win the Main Bracket, and the supremacy of the X-Stats had been dealt a critical blow, seemingly validating the Freaking Mario line of argument. Of course, Mario had accomplished this after boosting up to Samuss level, and there was some debate as to how much this really settled the whole argument, but it was hard for such a counterpoint to hold sway in the aftermath of Mario's massive victory. Regardless of the reason why, one thing was clear: Mario's spot on the Nintendo hierarchy was secured, and it would be over a decade before it would be seriously challenged again.

This was also the birth of "LOL X-Stats"

I do wonder how Mario/Samus goes in 2004 before the demographic shift. Mario might still pull it off like he did in 2018, but I doubt it's 60/40.

Yeah, I've always wondered that, too. All we know is that Mario couldn't SFF Samus nearly as much in the most recent character battle. Mario did have the pic advantage in Mario vs. Samus 2005, though I don't know if the benefit was significant (but I personally think lots of factors like pic advantage are more potent in SFF matches).

The funny thing about "LOL X-stats" is that... well, the issue was rarely x-stats. (okay, maybe I'm stating the obvious, and maybe we've already talked about it earlier in this topic?) The issue is something else, like an unpredictable SFF effect, or failing to identify a fluke-ish match. LOL x-stats kinda applies to characters like Master Chief who gets stronger as his opponents gets stronger, though (which is an issue of "linearity").

Hey alright you gave me my props for being the only person to actually call the match as a sound thrashing

Not that it helped me at all my bracket was a mess that year but it's nice to not have to say "well no Ulti didn't have him winning by that much"

I had venn diagrams and shit for that match man. Trying to explain SFF in the early stages was one of my few stats contribution feathers in my cap on this site. I'd rate it highly just for that.

I remembering in the stats topic after Tifa wrecked Sephiroth in 2018, and started looking at the impending Mario vs. Samus series and felt that maybe some assumptions we made about results in the past might not be as concrete as they used to be, and I remember someone in the stats topic was like, "Are you crazy? Samus could never beat Mario directly!" Boy was I vindicated when Samus vs. Mario finally was able to live up to it's 2005 hype.

But that just shows how much of a hold that one result held over everyone on the board.

26. Link vs. Vincent Valentine vs. Crono vs. Zero (2007) R3

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/d4c63dc0.jpg
Link 45.37% 64214
Vincent Valentine 21.78% 30825
Crono 20.58% 29123
Zero 12.27% 17359
TOTAL VOTES 141521
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Link_vs_Vincent_Valentine_vs_Crono_vs_Zero_2007
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2914-division-4-final-link-vincent-crono-zero

The boards relationship to the Noble Nine has always been complicated. As much as the board considered its members titans of the Character Battles and treated them with the appropriate reverance, as Ive written previously, from the second the Noble Nine concept was born, people were eager to see how soon it would be broken. As the years went on and the supremacy of the Noble Nine remained intact, the stakes to breaking it became higher and higher and a new dichotomy of conflicting emotions emerged on the board. On one hand the excitement and monumental nature of breaking the Noble Nine increased in magnitude, while on the other hand as the Noble Nine became more and more of an institution, there was a reflexive defensiveness towards it, as a kind of contest tradition that needed to endure. We wanted it to break, but also wanted it to not break at the same time. There is something equally impressive in both a neverending pattern as well as in the aberration that finally ends it, and many people seemed conflicted about which one they actually wanted to see happen.

In any case, while there were a handful of characters that were strong enough to challenge the Noble Nine across the early years of the contests, the endless discussions surrounding the breaking of the group tended to become crystallized in a singular entrant. *The* Noble Nine Breaker. Initially, this was Magus. Considered the strongest of the Near Elites, he always received precedence in the discussion of NN brealking, and was the one that was always put up against Snake or Sonic in mock brackets. This role defined his contest persona as much as any actual contest victories did, but eventually, as I will discuss in a later write up, it all fell apart. The mantle of Noble Nine Breaker was eventually taken up by Vincent, who, after victories over Squall and Ganondorf in 05 and 06, had proved himself beyond a reasonable doubt as the Number 10 on the site, his strength evidenced by match after match, instead of relying on a single result, as Maguss had. While the Noble Nine had remained intact in 2006, its cracks were beginning to show, and going into 2007, Vincent remained poised in the shadows, ready to be the character that would bring the whole thing down. It seemed almost inevitable at this point.

To people that wanted the Noble Nine to endure however, 2007 provided an unexpected respite. From the second the new format was announced, the decision was made that any loss a Noble Niner had to a non-Noble Niner in this format would not count as breaking the Noble Nine. We didnt yet quite understand all the nuances of LFF and vote splits, etc., but, thanks to the Battle Royale, we knew enough to realize that the playing field in these multi-way matches was not always on the level. This was not a unanimous decision, however, and there were still people who insisted that the Noble Nine could break in four ways, but this back and forth was, initially at least, purely speculative. In order for all of these debates to be resolved, there would first actually have to be a match featuring a Noble Nine character losing. And thankfully for all of those looking to have the debate settled, we had a prime opportunity set up as early as Round 3, where an increasingly precarious Crono would face off against the Noble Nine Breaker himself: Vincent. Despite Cronos faltering in 2006, most people stood by him and were predicting him to slide through the match in second place behind Link. Once the contest got underway though, signs of trouble emerged. While Cronos Round 1 looked good enough, his Round 2 was much more disappointing, with Crono actually losing the ASV to Zero in a match that he still won, but by a much smaller margin than expected. Vincent on the other hand would be going into their showdown looking as strong as ever, and by the time Round 3 finally rolled around the momentum had shifted towards Vincent.

Momentum, which initially seemed misplaced as the match began.Crono, always a board favorite, got out of the gate strong against Vincent, leading him by 5-6% throughout the opening hour of the poll, his vote lead increasing and increasing as the night went on, with no signs of reversal or stalling on the horizon. Two hours in, and Cronos lead breached 1,000 votes, not a small number when youre dealing with two entrants that would only end up pulling in 60,000 votes by themselves at the end of the match. The problem though was that ever since 2006 Crono had developed this nasty habit of completely collapsing as the match went on, and almost as soon as Crono hit the 1,000 vote mark, the signs of that collapse would start to emerge. Vincent would start stalling almost immediately, and Crono managed to only increase his lead by ~100 votes over the next two hours. And then, once 4 AM hit and the European vote arrived, Crono started to collapse for good. In just four hours, Cronos entire 1,100 vote lead was almost entirely erased, and while his collapse would be halted briefly by the arrival of the Midday Vote, it would fail to provide Crono with any type of recovery. The two would remained locked in a 50/50 struggle for the next several hours, just waiting for the ASV to arrive, which it eventually did, and as expected it brought about a further collapse for Crono. Vincent, already barely in the lead when the ASV kicked in, rode the wave of the ASV, and would finish the match in second place, ahead of Crono by more than 1,500 votes. History had just been made.

Or had it? The board would erupt, not only over the sheer upset nature of the result, but about whether or not this meant The Noble Nine had finally been broken. This result transferring to a 1v1 wasnt particularly disputed, but we had pre-determined that there were too many variables in multi-way matches for them to count, and even though we couldnt *see* any of these variables and overlaps, it didnt meant they werent there. Our decision held, and despite a lot of grumbling, the match would ultimately not count as breaking the Noble Nine. And yet, looking back on everything in hindsight, even if the Noble Nine was not *technically* broken by Vincent beating Crono, it did seem like some kind of hold had broken on a psychological level. It *felt* like the Noble Nine had broken that day, and while Im sure some of this is because the match feels more like how the Noble Nine was supposed to be broken, instead of the out of left field upsets we would get in later years, I cant say for sure that its all because of that. Maybe this match does deserve at least partial credit for making history after all.

The Noble Nine's winning streak was set in 24-hour 1v1 matches, a format which all but ceased to exist for twelve years.

Using the analogy of 1-seed upsets in March Madness:

Vincent>Crono 2007 was North Carolina>Oklahoma 1990 (the favorite loses, but not under the circumstances in which the streak was set)
Missingno>Crono 2010 was UMBC>Virginia 2018 (very similar to the streak's circumstances, but the format boosted the underdog)
Zelda>Snake 2018 was FDU>Purdue 2023 (first upset in which there is no ambiguity to "save" the streak)

https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Crono_at_the_Bat

bwburke94 posted...

Missingno>Crono 2010 was UMBC>Virginia 2018 (very similar to the streak's circumstances, but the format boosted the underdog)

What format are you talking about here in basketball? It's been the same 1 vs 16 set up for decades, and UMBC didn't have to go through a First Four match before facing Virginia.

Maybe the format was "Virginia sucks at offense"

UltimaterializerX posted...

Absolute bullocks.

Hey I'm just saying your crew prediction was like 53 I think

I'm the only stats topic person who actually called 60-40

Yeah, Ulti's prediction is a matter of public record and Lopen was the only one calling for 60/40.

And so is mine! I have the top Oracle prediction in that match as a badge of honor.

swirIdude posted...

What format are you talking about here in basketball? It's been the same 1 vs 16 set up for decades, and UMBC didn't have to go through a First Four match before facing Virginia.

My original thought was that Virginia didn't have their star player against UMBC.

But even then, one missing player shouldn't lead to a 20 point beatdown

swirIdude posted...

What format are you talking about here in basketball? It's been the same 1 vs 16 set up for decades, and UMBC didn't have to go through a First Four match before facing Virginia.

I think he meant that UMBC was only a 16 seed (rather than a 15) because the First Four exists. Bumping two 15 seeds down and dropping two 16 seeds from the round of 64 means 16 seeds are slightly stronger (and more likely to beat a 1) in the First Four era.

Yes, that's exactly it. The two 16s who don't go through the First Four would have been 15s before 2001.

Yesmar_ posted...

26. Link vs. Vincent Valentine vs. Crono vs. Zero (2007) R3

You know, I remember considering Link > Zero for this match due to the Vincent/Crono potential LFF. >_> (only a consideration, though)

Off-topic, but I was looking back at the Oracle predictions for the 2007 contest. My GOSH, some of those predictions were bad. Like, the very first match, for example.

https://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k7&type=match&match=1

The 25 Greatest GameFAQS Contest Matches of All Time

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/36221b85.jpg

These are all in chronological order so don't get any clues from that! I also didn't plan this out intentionally at all, but every single Character Battle has at least one entry on the list.

Heck yeah Squall/Luigi

Also I'm glad you're giving love to Snake/L-Block/Sonic/Squall because I think that's an underrated gem

My top two are both in there. Fairly obvious that they would be but hey.

DK vs Duck Hunt is surprising. I get it was close but that's my bet for #25.

Frog/Chief 2004
Mario/Cloud 2002
Mario/Crono 2003
Link/Cloud 2003
Link/Shepard/Draven 2013

That has been my predicted top 5 for a long time

Looking at it, we have no side contests represented and no games contests beyond the original