(1)Fallout 3 vs (1)Metroid Prime 2010

Ulti's Analysis
This match was AMAZING, but not for the reasons you might think. First and foremost were people posting that Liberty Prime video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298Cw3_qGwE) all over the place. Few things lift the spirit more than Liberty Prime yelling at communist scum. And then there was Umineko's 7th episode getting released on match day, which was of course awesome given it was the best episode yet.

On top of all that, we ended up getting a really good match. Way back before the contest started, Ngamer had an episode of The Show where he called Metroid Prime making the semifinal and he was literally laughed at by some idiot guest who thought Prime wouldn't even make it out of its own division. Who was that guy, anyway? <_<

Ngamer was one Europe/morning vote away from looking like a genius, but even in Prime's loss he looked awesome for calling this. Kudos, bud.

Unfortunately for Prime, it never led beyond the first hour. It would be nice to say Prime had a great lead and only lost because of the morning vote, but Fallout 3 started pushing a lead once the crazy Prime power hour ended, and it shook Prime off for good a little while later once the night vote started. Prime is a western game through and through and had almost no success anywhere else, so it was expected Prime would start falling off overnight a bit faster than other Nintendo games might have. Prime may very well have won a day/24-hour match, though, and it's just one more reason we need to start having 24 hour matches a round or two earlier. If you win 4 matches and make it out of your division, you deserve a full 24 hours to win or lose.

It's also highly likely this match was decided by the timely release of New Vegas, and who really knows how a potential rematch would go. Fallout could get bigger, Prime could get smaller because it enjoyed a contest title boost, or anything else. We don't really know.