Transience's Top 30 Most Surprising Contest Matches

30. Master Chief/Sub-Zero
Year: 2006 http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k6&type=match&match=32

Master Chief 49.05% 62932 Sub-Zero 50.95% 65358 TOTAL VOTES 128290

I have a hard time ranking this one because I called it! I think Leon did too. Most of the board was totally blindsided by this though. Yeah, Master Chief lost to Frog and struggled with DK. But this was Sub-Zero, a character who had never made it into the contest and was thought to be weaker than Scorpion, taking out the Chief.

In retrospect, especially given where Master Chief ended up, this match makes perfect sense. Sub-Zero is of course more popular than Scorpion and Master Chief of course would lose to a well-known character like Sub-Zero. But at the time, this was really surprising to 90% of the board.

29. Pokemon Gold/Xenogears
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal 42.05% 29381 Xenogears 57.95% 40495 TOTAL VOTES 69876

Year: 2004 http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SpC2k4&type=match&match=18

This one really doesn't belong on here - it didn't take the board by storm in the way that many others did. GSC was probably the board fave but not by a lot. I still found it super surprising though for a couple of reasons. One, it was a cultish RPG vs. friggin' Pokemon, and Xenogears ran away with it. This result becomes more fascinating with time. The GSC of 2015 would probably beat all but 12 or so games with ease. Thank god it's jammed in against Melee this year.

The other weird piece of trivia with this match is that it actually ran twice. The first day, only registered users could vote and Xenogears was ahead by a good bit. Everyone went 'well yeah, of course, the kiddies couldn't vote.' Then it opened to the public and Xenogears won by more. Of all the things, that was probably the most surprising. And awesome.

Love this match.